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In 2020, California led the nation in outlawing transcript withholding, a debt collection practice that sometimes kept low-income college students from getting jobs or advanced degrees. Five years later, 24 of the state’s 115 community colleges still said on their websites that students with unpaid balances could lose access to their transcripts, according to a recent UC Merced survey.
The communications failure has been misleading, student advocates said, although overall, the state’s students have benefited from the law.
It “raises questions about what actual institutional practices are at colleges and the extent to which colleges know the law and are fully compliant with the law,” said Charlie Eaton, a UC Merced sociology professor who led the research team that conducted the survey in October.
California community colleges say they are following the law, which prohibits them from refusing to release the grades of a student who owes money to the school — anywhere from a $25 library fine to unpaid tuition. The misinformation on some college websites is a clerical problem that campuses have been asked to update, the California Community Colleges chancellor’s office said in an emailed statement.
Without an official transcript, students can’t prove they’ve earned college credits to admissions offices elsewhere or to potential employers. Millions of students nationwide have lost access to their transcripts because of unpaid fees, according to estimates from the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.
Student advocates argued that the practice made little money for colleges, while costing graduates opportunities that could help them pay back their debts.
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