 Photo: Meredith Nierman Colleges Fight Attempts to Stop Them From Withholding Transcripts Over Unpaid Bills Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report/GBH News As many as 6.6 million students nationwide can’t obtain their academic transcripts because they have unpaid bills to colleges or universities. These balances can be as little as $25, though they are usually higher. The average at community colleges is $631 and at universities and colleges overall, $2,335.
In addition to New York and Massachusetts, bans on transcript holds as a means of making students pay their debts have been proposed in Minnesota and Ohio. They’ve already passed in California, Washington, and Louisiana; there, too, college lobbyists worked to thwart or water down the legislation. | 
