Women accumulated more debt than men at every level of higher education, but that gender gap was overshadowed by racial disparities. Black doctorate recipients borrowed far more than did their counterparts in other racial and ethnic groups. African-Americans’ cumulative undergraduate and graduate debt was more than four times that of Asians and more than twice that of whites. Among all doctorate recipients, those in education had the greatest education-related debt, and those in mathematics and computer science had the least.
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By gender
| Female | $8,595 | $18,191 | $26,556 |
| Male | $7,738 | $12,741 | $20,328 |
By citizenship status
| U.S. citizen or permanent resident | $10,623 | $19,567 | $29,988 |
| Temporary visa holder | $2,661 | $5,685 | $8,258 |
By race and ethnicity
| American Indian/Alaska Native | $15,168 | $35,042 | $50,210 |
| Asian | $5,677 | $9,642 | $15,186 |
| Black/African-American | $20,293 | $43,337 | $62,848 |
| Hispanic/Latino | $12,748 | $24,405 | $36,870 |
| White | $10,103 | $18,146 | $28,086 |
| 2 or more races | $11,975 | $20,702 | $32,430 |
By field
| Life sciences | $8,725 | $11,501 | $20,080 |
| Physical and earth sciences | $7,703 | $6,025 | $13,658 |
| Mathematics and computer sciences | $4,507 | $6,348 | $10,798 |
| Psychology and social sciences | $10,197 | $26,590 | $36,509 |
| Engineering | $5,364 | $6,279 | $11,549 |
| Education | $10,295 | $28,271 | $38,178 |
| Humanities and arts | $9,235 | $21,672 | $30,651 |
| Other fields | $8,511 | $23,494 | $31,687 |
| All | $8,132 | $15,245 | $23,191 |
Note: Debt was tallied by asking recipients to choose a debt range, presented in increments of $10,000, from “no debt” to "$90,001 or more.” To estimate overall debt, the midpoints of each range for undergraduate and graduate debt were selected and added together to yield a total debt amount. All valid reponses, including “no debt,” which was assigned a value of $0, were used to compute average debt levels. Those in the uppermost range were assigned a value of $95,000. Only education-related debt is reported. “Life sciences” includes agricultural sciences and natural resources, biological and biomedical sciences, and health sciences. “Other” includes nonscience and nonengineering fields not shown elsewhere. People who identified themselves as Hispanic may be of any race. Asians do not include Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders. Data for doctorate recipients of “other race or race not reported” (which includes Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) and “ethnicity not reported” were excluded from this table. More data are at www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/data.cfm.
Source: Survey of Earned Doctorates by National Science Foundation and five other federal agencies