Cesarina Barros dropped out of Newbury College in 2009 owing $10,000 in tuition. Seventeen years later, a debt collector is suing her for $28,000 in back tuition and interest — even though the Brookline college closed in 2019 and formally dissolved as a nonprofit three years after that. The 39-year-old registration specialist at a Boston Public Schools welcome center downtown says the lawsuit has upended her life while she raises two young children.
Barros went to Boston Municipal Court in October to contest the debt, as first reported by GBH News. Judge Steven Kim presided over her hearing, which was ultimately postponed until January 2027. She is far from alone: according to the same report, a Quincy-based lawyer is suing Barros and at least 20 other former Newbury students, with court filings showing attorney Carl Brugnoli representing the college in the debt cases. Brugnoli did not respond to interview requests from the outlet.
Barros told the station the ordeal is taking a toll on her mental and physical health, causing stress and headaches, and that she cannot realistically afford to repay the amount claimed in court documents. She said she hopes to eventually clear her debt and return to school to finish the early childhood education degree she started years ago. Consumer advocates, per the same report, are questioning whether Brugnoli even has legal standing to sue on behalf of a defunct institution.
A College That Vanished, A Debt That Didn't
Newbury College announced in December 2018 that it would close at the end of the spring 2019 semester, citing financial challenges, according to Inside Higher Ed. The signs had been building for years: enrollment plunged from 1,282 students in 2006 to just 620 in 2017, and the school lost nearly $2.8 million that year alone after running deficits twice between 2015 and 2017. Enrollment among adult students aged 25 to 64 was especially hard hit, falling from 326 in 2006 to only 68 in 2017, the outlet reported.
At the time, Newton's Mount Ida College and Wheelock College were cited as other Massachusetts schools struggling to keep their doors open, according to Patch. Newbury's old campus has since been partly transformed into The Newbury of Brookline, a luxury senior-housing development, as noted by masslive.com. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the state attorney general's office named Wheaton College the legal successor to Newbury's funds and assets in 2022, based in Norton.
Wheaton Says It Never Took On Newbury's Debts
Wheaton College uses the Newbury funds to support access to higher education, including scholarships for eligible Boston-area students through what's known as the Newbury Scholarship. The college has reported that the fund grew to $4 million since 2022 and has benefited seven students. But Wheaton maintains it did not acquire Newbury's student accounts or outstanding balances when the college closed — even though the debt collector's own court filings list both Newbury's former Brookline address and Wheaton's Norton address, according to GBH News.
Attorney Adam Minsky, who represents student loan borrowers and their families, told the station that nonprofits sometimes transfer financial interests or obligations to another institution when they dissolve. Minsky said that in 15 years of practice, he has not encountered students owing money to a closed school until now. He believes students should not have to pay tuition to a school that shut down before they could finish their program.
Institutional Debt Versus Student Loans — A Crucial Distinction
The case highlights a distinction that trips up many borrowers: tuition debt owed directly to a college is a separate category from federal or private student loans, which have their own discharge options, according to masslive.com. What happens to that institutional debt after a closure often hinges on whether the college filed for bankruptcy and whether a judge or the school itself absorbs the obligation. One student-loan lawyer cited in that reporting argued students generally should not owe money to an institution that no longer exists or operates.
Massachusetts has seen this pattern repeat. Since 2014, 28 colleges and universities in the state have closed or merged, with 17 closing outright, and small colleges with religious affiliations have been hit especially hard, per the same masslive.com report. Anna Maria College abruptly closed in May 2026 while students owed the institution $1.98 million in tuition and fee debt. Nationally, the scale is larger still: more than 1,100 colleges closed between 2010 and 2020, leaving 246,000 borrowers eligible for a federal closed-school discharge, according to NPR.
Advocates See a Growing Problem
Anna Anderson, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, said the issue of collecting debts after colleges close is a growing one. She warned that debt collectors may buy portfolios of these obligations cheaply and then chase profit through fees, wage garnishments and liens — describing it as a worst-case scenario former students could face. The debt collector pursuing Barros and the other former Newbury students is seeking payment and has threatened wage garnishment, according to GBH News reporting. Anderson advised anyone sued over this kind of debt to consult a lawyer immediately and explore possible defenses.
Other states have moved to close this gap. Maryland and Washington have taken steps to prohibit debt collection from students at colleges that close abruptly, and Maryland's attorney general previously reached a settlement forcing Brightwood College to forgive $2.6 million owed by 1,200 former students after that school's sudden 2018 closure. Separately, the nonprofit group Student Defense has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Education isn't fully following its own closed-school discharge rules, following the 2016 shutdown of Brooks Institute, according to NPR. Efforts to streamline automatic federal student-debt discharges have themselves been delayed until 2035 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, masslive.com reported.
For now, Barros waits for her case to resume in January, still working at Boston Public Schools, still raising her two children, and still hoping the debt from a college that no longer exists will eventually disappear along with it.
