The results are striking.

Campus Reform reports.

Fed study: degrees didn’t protect blacks, Latinos from downturn

As the 2016 presidential contenders eagerly vie for the youth vote with promises to expand and further subsidize higher education, a new study claims that a degree is no guarantee of financial stability, at least for African-Americans and Latinos.

The report released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis poses the question, “Why didn’t higher education protect Hispanic and black wealth?” in response to the finding that college graduates in those communities experienced far greater economic declines during the recent recession than did those without a college degree.

Among Hispanics, the median net worth of college graduates fell 71.9 percent between 2007 and 2013, while non-grads lost 41.2 percent over the same period. For blacks, the figures are 59.7 percent and 37.3 percent, respectively.

Black and Latino graduates also fared worse than their white and Asian counterparts during the recession, with the median net worth of white grads falling 16 percent and that of Asian grads actually rising by 5.1 percent.

The unusual findings prompted the authors to examine the same trends over a longer time period, co-author Bill Emmons told NPR last week; when they extended their analysis back to 1992, the results were even more striking.