In Mass., Public Colleges Send Debt Collectors After Nearly 12,000 Students

James Smith sits outside his home in San Francisco, California on Sunday, May 30, 2021. A former University of Massachusetts Amherst student, Smith’s transcript was withheld for a small debt. He describes the university’s debt collection policy as “wildly predatory.” (Marlena Sloss for GBH News)

Back when he was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, James Smith recalled he fell behind on his final housing payment after his family in Minnesota ran into financial problems. Smith said he promised to repay UMass, but the registrar withheld his transcript anyway.

“It was sort of like communicating with a brick wall,” he said. “I told them, ‘I’ll pay it when I can but I just don’t have the money.’”

After UMass sent his $2,000 balance to a collection agency, Smith said he began receiving notices and phone calls informing him the collection fee would exceed his original balance.

“It was certainly really frustrating when I was trying to pay what I owed, and essentially the debt had been doubled,” he said. “I thought it was just wildly predatory.”

A GBH News-Hechinger Report investigation finds public colleges in Massachusetts have sent to collection agencies the overdue accounts of 11,719 students. About 5,500 of those pending cases come from the state’s 15 community colleges, more than 3,400 from the five-campus UMass system and the remainder from state colleges like Salem State (894) and Framingham State (702).

Read the rest of the story at GBH’s website.