Colleges playing tough on debt

The Boston Globe reports:

On every college campus, young people arrive each fall brimming with hope that the university will launch them on the path to a better life. But when those students fail to pay their bills, they often find that the school they saw as a benevolent guide to greater opportunity has another side -- aggressive debt collector.

Universities forcefully pursue students to collect unpaid loans and other debt, sometimes taking them to court, refusing to release their transcripts, and tacking on fees of as much as 66 percent of the original balance.

Over the past decade, Northeastern University and Boston University have each filed an average of 200 lawsuits each year to collect money from former students, according to a Globe review of court records. Both schools have commitments to help underprivileged Boston students, but lack the deep coffers of schools like Harvard or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which can extend more generous scholarships, leaving students with fewer loans.

College is a business,a big business.Just because a college has you read John Rawls or Karl Marx don't be fooled:they want your money and the federal government's.For many,college is no longer worth the cost considering the debt load.