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Universities Hold Transcripts Hostage Over Loans
Hugh Pickens writes "Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times that growing numbers of students are discovering their old school is actively blocking them from getting a job or going on to a higher degree by refusing to issue an official transcript. The schools won't send the transcripts to potential employers or graduate admissions office if students are in default on student loans, or in many cases, even if they just fall one or two months behind. It's no accident that they're doing this. It turns out the federal government 'encourages' them to use this draconian tactic, saying that the policy 'has resulted in numerous loan repayments.' It is a strange position for colleges to take, writes Lindorff, since the schools themselves are not owed any money — student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government, and in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way. They are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection. 'It's worse than indentured servitude,' says NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who helped organize the Occupy Student Debt movement last fall. 'With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.'"
I was incredibly fortunate to be able to call my department head and speak with him, he personally corresponded with the background check agency and it was finally accepted that I wasn't lying, however, they said that I couldn't list the degree on my resume. This was in 2005 by the way.
The state of US education seems to be:
-Expensive
-Ineffectual
and now
-Counter-productive
A triumvirate of failure.
You can't work until you start paying us back and you can't pay us back until you start work.
Seems a bizzare way of organising things. In the UK you can't pay back your student loans until you earn a certain minimum wage and then it starts to come out from your pay like a tax as a percentage of your wage. And like the summary says it is the government who hold the debt, not the individual Universities/colleges. If they really want to stop the problem of defaulting then surely it would make more sense to reduce the number of degress that didn't have much job prospects, rather then block the people with degrees from getting jobs.
That didn't work for me. The college district sent me an extortion note years later claiming that I owed them money. Thing is that I don't owe them any money and it's an impossibility that I owe money for that term as they won't let you register for classes if you haven't paid and I took classes the next quarter. They still haven't unlocked the account. I'll probably have to file suit against the college if I want my transcripts unlocked as sending them a letter demanding evidence that I owe money didn't work and student loans aren't subject to any statute of limitations on collections.
I'm still not sure why they felt the need to send out fraudulent bills other than the budget conditions now, but unfortunately, filing a lawsuit against the state is likely the only way in which I'll get it permanently cleared up.
This seems like a great way to get alumni to donate when they eventually do start making good money. The affected alumni are not going to harbor any resentment at all.
She concedes it's a difficult issue but says that "it's the only tool we have to make them pay."
A music major ... was making payments on his $62,000 student debt after graduation while working as an adjunct professor for Temple.
So we have institutions lending $62,000 to majors that have terrible job prospects, then when they can't get jobs they don't know how to get the money back... okay. How about don't lend that much money to someone who you can be pretty sure won't pay the money back? I know higher education should be accessible to all and this and that, but perhaps 62 grand for a degree in music should give us pause to reconsider a) why does a degree in music cost 62 grand and b) why does someone want to spend 62 grand for a degree in music.
I can partiall answer b). I was at a advisory board meeting for my university's CSE department recently, and some undergrads were asked the question: "So what is tuition now?" No one could answer. They don't even KNOW that they are paying $40k+ a year in tuition. This is because they don't even look at their bill. They fill out the fafsa, press a button, sign some papers, and get free money that gives another year of partying. The reality only hits them AFTER they graduate and look back at their full bill. This attitude on the student's side has got to stop
There's also the attitude on the institution side, that they can loan someone $60k for a degree in basket weaving and reasonably expect to get it back. This has to stop as well, but I don't know how to fix it.
Who is muddying these waters?
The schools have been paid, have they not? That's the whole point of a loan - lender pays now, and you pay the lender.
And, as others have said, it's a little short-sighted to stand in the way of those in debt, since the best way for them to pay off those loans is to be successful. Again, that's the whole point.
Any institution engaging in this sort of behavior is way out of line. In fact, it's rather rare to see such a clear-cut case of wrongdoing when it comes to financial/political entanglements.
Back off, universities. You are not moral guardians, gatekeepers, or creditors. You are educational institutions, and your obligation is to the students, not to whatever twisted group of people suggested you monitor you alumni for credit score violations.
A declining credit score is already one hell of a millstone - like weight gain, it's much easier to damage your score than improve it. The last thing we need is universities undercutting those students who need their credentials the most - those who essentially gambled a portion of future success on the hopes of a beneficial education. Do they want us to pay our loans off or not?
they should have no interest in doing so
They have a very big interest in student loans; without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically. Students who don't pay back their loans are costing everyone who does make their payments extra in the form of higher interest rates. Instead of getting a big attitude, try working with the system instead of against it.
Government needs to get out of the business of supplying endless money to students. This is the exact reason why college tuition has skyrocketed in recent years. Universities don't have to care about keeping expenses low, they just need to feed all the students through the government loan line effectively. If loans had to be secured only through private means or at LEAST the gov loans were very low, universities would have to lower prices to keep getting new students.
They will give you an enormous amount of patience and latitude. All you have to do is call and tell them that you can't pay them. They will ask you a few questions, then take your word in regards to your income, employment status, and expenses without asking for so much a a shred of proof, and most likely grant you a deferment of forbearance.
When I couldn't find a job about 5 years ago, at first I got by on deferment for about 6 months, after which a had to bite the bullet and take a job way beneath my education level. When I called to tell them that I was now able to pay about 50% of my payment every month, they offered to keep the deferment in place so my partial payments would go entirely to principal. Yes, that's correct - they had even stopped the interest for the entire deferment period. They stopped time itself to help me. Once I had gotten on my feet I started full repayment. When I lost that job before I'd had a chance to save and build an unemployment hedge, they did it for me again.
They withhold transcripts in cases where students have dodged them, avoided them, and failed to acknowledge the debt.
Wow 60% huh? I'm guessing because you're shunning ignorance and embracing science, that you simply hit enter before actually providing us with the source for a number. I mean, what kind of a idiot would base such a bold statement on his mere feelings.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
As a Canadian, where the government is heavily involved in both providing student loans and subsidizing education, I have to say that you're totally wrong.
I graduated in 2004 with an Electrical Engineering degree. The total I had in student loans was $0. (zero) Co-op paid for most of my expenses. Courses were about $400, six per term, a total of $2400 per semester. (I know, holy shit, right?) Books were the typical ass-rape, but in the non-lubed Canadian version. (A couple of books were $120, lots at $80, I eventually just gave 'em all away.) I was not living with my parents, and rent was about $500 a month.
It's dirty socialism, right? Nope, it's long-term thinking. I pay more in taxes now than I did before I got my degree since I'm earning 2.5x what I got when I started school. I'll be paying 2.5x more taxes (more actually, since we have progressive taxes up here) for the rest of my career.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The American education system itself isn't that bad. It's not the best, but it's not the worst, either.
One huge problem is that the schooling (schooling, not education) centers around rote memorization and teaching to the test. How things work, why they work, how to apply them... those kinds of questions are nonexistent in most cases.
Some countries pay--not loan--100% of the tuition for a fairly large percentage of their student population and don't seem to have the runaway cost problems that we do.
As with most situations like this, there's clearly a solution other than "the government needs to get out of the business of X". Maybe it should, but it doesn't need to; it may just need to do it better. What do places like Denmark do differently? Can we try that, rather than just giving up?
Google Apps for Education is free. There are a lot of good reasons not to use it, but your argument of "enjoy your $100k in student debt" doesn't fly - the University can reduce its costs by outsourcing email. That in turn reduces student fees, which reduces student debt.
A lot of people like Google Apps. Perhaps they did it not out of laziness, but by considering the feature set students need. Many university use crappy webmail clients like Horde or Squirrel Mail... the UX of Gmail is far ahead of those. Google Docs has excellent real-time collaboration features. There are plenty of ways for students to get hands-on experience without avoiding useful web applications.
I'd guess that those other places don't allow for-profit institutions to access government subsidies.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Woah... That was an epic Slashdot circle jerk. You managed to bag on all the elitist neckbeard enemies in one post. Hipsters, gangstas, religious fanactics all in one post and blame them for something completely unreleasted you got upvoted to Score:4 Interesting! Congratulations!
My income tax rate's not far under that, all things considered, and I do all right but I'm far from rich (FICA is a bitch--a regressive-ass bitch). For it, I get poor transportation infrastructure (my state's roads are exceptionally bad, to say nothing of public transit, or rather, the lack of it), no help toward health care (so, like most, my health and my family's is dependent on my employment; there's a nice extra risk to discourage entrepreneurship), and some minimal aid toward education should I want to use it (didn't before, don't expect that I will).
I'd happily pay another 10% or so to gain what people in many (most?) other OECD nations have--I'd be a fool not to, since it's a bargain.
Which grad school did you go to, that was centered around "rote memorization"?
When students from all over the world stop lining up to come to our grad schools, we can talk.
This article was about college loans, and the corporatization of higher education. Of course we're going to be paying more and getting less, as long as our universities continue to follow a corporate model. That's the way corporations work. Profits come from giving a customer less than he paid for.
In the 80's, when I started my academic career (well before I got tenure) I noticed a distinct transformation in university administration. More academic bigwigs read the latest business management self-help guide than read St Augustine or Plato. Endowments were treated like corporate war-chests. Three-piece suits replaced tweed jackets with suede elbow-patches.
And it went downhill from there. Universities decided that they didn't really have any responsibility to society, they only had a responsibility to the "market". And having a relative monopoly on credentials, they began to raise their prices to whatever the market would bear. I started noticing a lot more "Associate Deans" in departments that were not academics at all, but transplanted corporate middle management. C-level executive jobs started going to corporate stars, not educators. And the salaries and bonuses and golden parachutes followed right behind. Any of you who've worked in academic know what I'm talking about. One day I noticed that the CIO of my institution was a former Sun exec who got an unbelievable compensation package from the school. A few years later, when Sun crashed, it was easy to see why he had been so happy to take the university's offer. And he was a fuckwit. I think he later became the CIO of a big Ivy school after our IT had been thoroughly trashed. Like many corporate execs, he failed his way to the top. He likes to be on corporate boards, I have heard, naturally.
A belief started in the early '80s, that universities needed to be "run like businesses", as if there was something salutary about the corporate culture of Wall Street. And as you might expect, running a university "like a business" has turned it to very expensive shit, where a graduate leaves the institution with more in the debit column than the credit column. And it got worse and worse and though I tried to insulate myself from it I eventually just walked away and retired on my 50th birthday. Fuck it. If I wanted to work in corporate culture, I'd have gone for the money in the first place.
Oh, by the way, the same people who had the bright idea that universities should be "run like businesses" also brought us the notion that government should be "run like a business". That if we just put some business douchebag in charge of the shooting match, everything will be just fine. The only problem is, almost none of the people that those institutions are supposed to serve happen to be shareholders. As universities, and governments start to be run like corporations, we are finding that students and citizens are seen as consumables, not consumers. And certainly not shareholders. The expendibles.
You are welcome on my lawn.