“Every time I stepped on campus, I realized I have to be here.”

Bola Ibidapo used to step foot on a corporate campus in Dallas, Texas every day. She was “comfy,” “cozy,” working as an environmental claims specialist for a global insurance company. Her job came with a steady salary that afforded her brunches, regular salon trips, and spa visits -  a lifestyle she unabashedly enjoyed.

But about three years into her corporate role, the TEDxOakLawn speaker started thinking about going back to school. 

She had zero debt from college thanks to the generous support of her family, and felt pressure to go back to school from her Nigerian parents, who believe “education is life.”

“I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I also knew obviously that’s a lot of time and that’s money,” Ibidapo, 27, said. “I wasn’t going to go back to school just to go to school.”

Ibidapo first debated a master’s in business administration, then a degree in counseling. She visited friends in advanced degree programs on the East Coast, and finally honed in on her desire to obtain a law degree. Ibidapo knew transitioning to the legal field would aid in her future quest to lobby for widespread education reform. 

But the financial burden of going back to school held her back from making the leap. Ibidapo feared taking on any new school debt until the pandemic hit. 

After turning down scholarships to East Coast schools, in August, Ibidapo started law school at the University of Texas at Austin with a price tag of $150,000. 

While Ibidapo wraps up her first semester, she joins the ranks of nearly 45 million Americans facing substantial student loan debt after college. She also joins the ranks of many millennial women battling the so-called “she-cession” with education.

“The degree will pay for itself,” she said. “That’s an encouragement to me. It’s not like I’m not the first person to come out of school with loans, to be a lawyer and come out with loans, and have that worry.”

The Outlook for Working Women

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, working women, and specifically women of color, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. 

Women, who account for a majority of jobs in the education, hospitality, and service sectors, faced a noticeably higher rate of unemployment in April when the pandemic first hit.

Men saw an unemployment rate of 13 percent while women battled an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent. Women of color fared even worse. Black women faced an unemployment rate of 16.7 percent and Hispanic women battled against record-breaking unemployment of 18.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics report.

The Institute for Women’s Policy & Research linked the staggering discrepancies to women typically holding jobs in leisure and hospitality sectors. When Megan Anguiano, 30, saw her airline job at risk of furloughs and layoffs, she had to make a pivot similar to Ibidapo.

However, Anguiano had to consider more than her personal career goals before making a move. Her husband of four years and three-year-old daughter would directly be impacted by her decision to go back to school.

A first-generation college graduate, Anguiano said enrolling in a Master’s program at the University of Arizona was motivated by more than mounting bills. Already paying off over $50,000 in undergraduate loans and facing medical debt from her daughter’s birth and NICU care, Anguiano saw seeking an advanced degree as a chance to reset. 

When the pandemic hit, Anguiano first started reassessing life outside of her daily routines of “driving to work, coming home, picking up my daughter from school, [and] cooking dinner.” 

She and her husband, also a first-generation graduate, saw an opportunity to “stop squandering money” by paying rent and acquired their first home, a long-term goal afforded to them by their stable corporate jobs. 

When Anguiano advanced in her job in aviation technology, she was proud and eager to set the example for her daughter, Luna, to prove “being a mother is not my defining character—I am still me.” But balancing childcare and working in an environment that eventually “disagreed with her working style” was not something Anguiano wanted to do long-term, let alone for the rest of an unpredictable pandemic. 

Anguiano grew up hearing her mom say, “I was going to be a flight attendant,” and did not want to live with the same professional regrets when she became a mother herself. When a lucrative opportunity to take a voluntary separation package arrived from her company in June, Anguiano jumped. 

“It wasn’t only me really wanting to do this [wanting to go back to school],” she said. “A part of the consideration was that I wasn’t happy in my actual work.” 

Going back to school to avoid an undesirable career situation has been a strategy since the Vietnam War, according to research by The American Economic Review.

Worth the Cost

The gravity of these penalties can depend on your race, Twillie explained, pointing to the fact Black women are the fastest-growing most-educated demographic in America.

Black students, on average, also owe $25,000 more in debt for their higher education than their white peers. Nearly 70% of Hispanic and Latino students end up owing $40,000 or more in debt, according to 2018 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.  

As of July 2020, the amount of outstanding student loan debt reached a staggering $1.7 trillion. And for most of the pandemic, a time coinciding with the U.S. presidential election, speculation about relief coming in the form of massive student loan forgiveness became widespread. 

President-Elect Joe Biden has definitively supported a proposed plan to forgive $10,000 of debt for students like Ibidapo and Anguiano. But as control of the U.S. Senate remains influx due to a Georgia run-off, relief could be far down the road for women needing support now.

As women of color facing additional cultural and financial challenges, both Ibidapo and Anguiano are left figuring out how they can afford their exit from corporate and education ambitions before, after, and during the pandemic.

“If I don’t get this financial literacy down now, we’re going to have problems later,” Ibidapo said. “I joke around, but Dave Ramsey is something I’m utilizing now as a student.”

Ibidapo managed to scale back her cost of living, estimating her law school expenses in Austin, Texas to be somewhere between $55,000 to $60,000 a year. Taking advantage of financial programs sponsored by the university, she also learned how to budget for the summer and winter months when loans can’t sustain her. 

During her first semester of law school, Ibidapo’s peers nominated her to represent her class for the Student Bar Association. She expects to graduate in 2023. 

Anguiano minimized her expected education costs by choosing an affordable program instead of her costly “brand name” preferences or expensive international programs. She started her quarterly Master’s degree program in October, two weeks behind her peers, but caught up quickly. 

To ensure her family and their lifestyle did not have to make additional sacrifices, Anguiano also picked up a job at a local medical institution as a senior immigration specialist. Working in a compassion-focused role and studying human rights, building upon her experience in cultural heritage studies, Anguiano is closer to her goal.

“If it hadn’t been for this pandemic, I really would have worked around my personal situation instead of just nixing everything and starting from scratch,” she said. “I wanted to make sure whatever I’m working toward is important, meaningful… and makes the world a better place.”

She expects to graduate with her Master’s in human rights in 2022.

In November, the unemployment gap between men and women narrowed to a difference of 0.2 percent. According to the latest Women’s Policy and Research report, women still face substantial job losses due to the pandemic.

More than 2 million adult women are still without jobs, with substantial losses noted in the state and local government sector. 

“Education is just a small piece,” she said. “Women really have to be tuned into what’s going on in their industry… so they can make the best decision available for themselves and their families.”