The Increasing Institutional Debt Transparency and Protecting Students Act (AB 850) aims to lift educational barriers and provide critical consumer protections for students as well as shed light by a lesser-known type of student debt: instituational debt owed to schools directly.

To lift educational barriers and provide critical consumer protections and increase transparency on California's growing institutional debt crisis, we are focused on passing AB 850. The Increasing Institutional Debt Transparency and Protecting Students Act (AB 850) will: 

• Establishing a one-term grace period for students with institutional debt to allow them to register or re-enroll in their coursework. This will allow students the chance to make critical progress towards their degree while giving them the opportunity to get back on track and pay off their institutional debt.

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• Prohibiting institutions of higher education from withholding a degree that has been earned by a student simply because the student owes an institutional debt.

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• Establishing important guardrails on the use of third-party debt collection and protect students from tax return and benefit garnishment.

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• Providing much-needed transparency on the growth and impact of institutional debt by requiring consistent data collection and reporting.