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The absence of race in the news media’s coverage of student loans
Baker, D., Shook, L., Ramirez-Mendoza, J., & Bennett, C. T. (2025). Race below the fold: The absence of race in the news media’s coverage of student loans. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Advance online publication. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.3102/01623737251324937
The media discourse on student loans plays a significant role in the way that policy actors conceptualize challenges and potential solutions related to student debt. This study examines the racialized language in student loan news articles published in eight major news outlets between 2006 and 2021. We found that 18% of articles use any racialized language, though use has accelerated since 2018. This increase appears to be driven by terms that denote groups of people instead of structural problems, with 8% of articles mentioning “Black” but less than 1% mentioning “racism.” These findings emphasize the importance of treating the media as a policy actor capable of shaping the salience of racialization in discussions about student loans.
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