VPM Daily Newscast Special Edition - Dreams Deferred Pt. 1

Over the past year, VPM News has been looking into a hidden type of debt affecting thousands of Virginia college students. It’s not federal student loans – which dominates most of the headlines. It’s money owed directly to institutions -- called direct-to-school debt.   In our series Dreams Deferred, we’ll explore how this debt is creating hardships for students… making it difficult for them to complete their degrees and advance their careers. We’ll address the school and state policies that create and perpetuate this problem. And we’ll look at what some colleges are doing to help students with this debt finish their degrees.   Today we start by exploring how students end up with direct-to-school debt in the first place.