The bill would not forgive any student debt held by the school.
If it becomes law, Lim said it would impact Georgia’s public colleges, including two- and four-year schools, and potentially some private colleges that could be subject to such regulation.
Under the proposal, schools could still charge students for providing a transcript, but they couldn’t charge a higher fee because the requester owes money.
A spokeswoman for the University System of Georgia, which includes 26 public colleges, said it does not comment on pending legislation.
Nationally, some college leaders and groups have defended transcript withholding as a way to keep students accountable for debt. The Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations has called it “a key tool in the process by which colleges and universities communicate with students about owed balances.”
In the past few years, just over a half-dozen states have passed related laws targeting transcript withholding. The movement represents a paradigm shift as policymakers and colleges begin to rethink what has been a common but ineffective tool for debt collection, said Winston Berkman-Breen, deputy director of advocacy and policy counsel for the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center.
“There’s no intrinsic value to the transcript to the school. It’s only a tactic to inflict pain,” he said. “It’s only a penalty.”
The debt a student owes directly to their school is different than federal loans students may take out. This so-called institutional debt can vary in amount from as little as $25 for a library fine or a surprise graduation fee to larger amounts due to withdrawing midsemester, he said.
Some of the recently passed state laws have a wider focus than the Georgia proposal. The most flexible, such as a California law signed in 2019, generally ban colleges from withholding transcripts for any reason. Other states require transcripts to be released for circumstances beyond employment purposes, such as when a student is trying to transfer to another college.
Rep. Beth Camp, R-Concord, said she signed on to support the Georgia bill because many times students don’t know they owe money or haven’t had a due process period to dispute a charge.
“We don’t want to put (up) any barriers for anyone trying to get into the workforce or get a better job,” she said.
