: What kind of debt is an unpaid tution bill? If someone doesn't pay their tuition to a university, is that considered student loan debt, consumer debt, or something else? I mean for the purposes of debt forgiveness (e.g. i

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If you are supposed to pay tuition at the start of the semester, the school will drop you from your classes on the first day of the semester if you haven't paid.

If you are on a payment plan and you fail to make a payment, they will drop you from the classes.

It is possible to end the semester owing them money, if you run up some bills: traffic/parking fines, library fines...

This debt can also happen if you drop out in the middle of the semester, and the scholarship/grant pulls back the funds; now you owe tuition for classes you never completed.

If you owe them money, they can block you from registering for the next semester. If you are in your last semester they won't let you graduate. Which means that you can't prove you earned the degree.

If you don't have enough credits to graduate and try and transfer to another school, they won't release an official transcript, which the new school requires to give you credit for the classes you did complete.

If this is a state school, and you live in the state, they might have the ability to have the state tax authority withhold your tax refund.

Eventually they are like any other debt you owe. They can sell the debt, they can go after it themselves, they can use the courts. But in the end they will prevent you from being able to prove you completed the degree, or to show progress towards a degree.