A n issue arising in discussions about government support for graduate education in science and engineering is student indebtedness.
Differences are also apparent between men and women.
A smaller percentage of underrepresented minorities were debt free compared to whites or Asians. In addition, underrepresented minorities reported higher levels of debt than their white and Asian counterparts. Each of the four indebtedness ranges shown in figure 1 has a larger percentage of underrepresented minorities than either whites or Asians. But that is not the case. In most of these fields the differences reported were substantial.