Help Us Investigate Collection Practices at Virginia Colleges and Universities

Academic institutions are sending students’ unpaid tuition bills to collection agencies and courthouses. Has this happened to you or anyone you know?

by Megan Pauly, Virginia Public Media

Oct. 12, 2020, 9 a.m. EDT

Has your unpaid tuition bill been sent to a collection agency or courthouse? Please share your story with VPM and ProPublica. Our newsrooms are investigating collection practices at colleges and universities in Virginia. In some cases, students are charged 30% in collection fees on top of the initial balance they owe. Some students end up dropping out because of the debt. Others have been sued.

Hearing from students will help make our reporting more complete. If you’ve had a tuition bill sent to collections, or know someone who has, please share your story with reporter Megan Pauly by filling out this form. You can help us do even more reporting by sharing this post on your Instagram Story or in a direct message to people in your networks.

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page

Help Us Investigate Collection Practices at Virginia Colleges and Universities

Academic institutions are sending students’ unpaid tuition bills to collection agencies and courthouses. Has this happened to you or anyone you know?

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Chevron Will Pay Record Fines for Oil Spills in California

Idaho Legislature Approves $2 Billion for Schools to Repair and Replace Aging Buildings

A Marijuana Boom Led Her to Oklahoma. Then Anti-Drug Agents Seized Her Money and Raided Her Home.

A Diplomat’s Visits to Oklahoma Highlight Contacts Between Chinese Officials and Community Leaders Accused of Crimes