Get ready to be depressed: more than three times as many black people live in jail than in college dorms!

Get ready to roll your eyes: this doesn't include students who live off campus. Or commuter students. Not to mention the different lengths of time a person would be living in jail vs. living in a dorm.

Still, the fact that a black person is more likely to live in a jail cell than in a college dorm is an upsetting, if misleading, stat. Just ask Marc Morial.

“It’s one of the great social and economic tragedies of our time,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the Urban League. “It points to the signature failure in our education system and how we’ve been raising our children.”

The Census Bureau released 2006 data Thursday on the social, racial and economic characteristics of people living in adult correctional facilities, college housing and nursing homes. It is the first in-depth look at people living in “group quarters” since the 1980 census. It shows, for example, that nursing homes had much older residents in 2006 than in 1980.

What about people who live in a dorm for part of the year then get sent to jail? Do they get counted on both sides?

[MSNBC]