This story about debt collection was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

Richard Fishburn never imagined he’d one day be facing down debt collectors — all because he decided to return to college.

An Army veteran who had worked all his life, Fishburn enrolled at Cleveland State University in Ohio in 2016. But in his third semester, when the back injury he sustained in the Army flared up, his advisers encouraged him to take time to heal so he wasn't in excruciating pain sitting in lecture halls.

That decision proved costly. Although he withdrew from classes, Fishburn said, he still received a bill for tuition without any explanation for why he still owed money. When he tried to re-enroll, Fishburn was told he needed to pay in full. Cleveland State had added $600 in collection and late fees, and eventually, as required by state law, it passed the debt on to the state attorney general's office, which then sent it to a for-profit debt collection company and then to a private law firm. At each step along the way, interest was tacked on. His original bill of $2,447 ballooned to more than $4,250.

Fishburn, 34, can't imagine when he'll have the money to pay off his debt, and until he does, he can't go back to college. He has been unemployed since his last job in television and film ended and the pandemic began. His wife is working, but with three young children and a mortgage, they have nothing left over to chip away at a debt that is now 74 percent more than what he originally owed.