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Most students go into debt to pay for college. And while no one wants to be in the red, a new report from left-leaning think tank Demos argues that the increasingly debt-financed higher education system in the United States is especially harmful to low-income, black and Latino kids.

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(New York, NY)- During the next few weeks thousands of students across the country will graduate from college, an accomplishment that used to symbolize a step toward financial independence and entry into the middle class.

One of the major concerns that surround unpaid internships is access. Wealthier students benefit; poor students don’t.

The most important fact about higher education is that only a minority of people go to college. That fact would change if college was affordable for more people.

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Demos, the New York-based group, began monitoring North Carolina about a decade ago because it spotted a drop-off in public assistance registrations. Gary Bartlett, the State Board of Elections director at the time, was eager to attract more voters, said Stuart Naifeh, an attorney with Demos.

“He was as dismayed as we were about the low rates,” Naifeh said. “He wanted to work with us to improve that.”

Racism has affected voting in America since its founding, and it continues to affect voting today.

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This is not the first time North Carolina has fallen out of compliance with the NVRA. Dēmos, the New York-based group that has put North Carolina on notice, also monitored the state about 10 years ago after seeing a drop in voter registration applications processed by public assistance agencies. Gary Bartlett, the State Board of Elections director at the time, worked closely with Dēmos to get the state back into compliance.

After the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, many pointed at the gap between the black population and their overwhelmingly white elected officials as a symptom of the country’s problem with race.