Last October, the Department of Education introduced new rules that would ban colleges from withholding transcripts for any semester that a student used federal aid money and paid their balance in full. Those rules went into effect on Monday, July 1.

According to a report done by Ithaka S+R, more than 6 million former college students can't access their college transcripts due to their former schools holding them in order to collect unpaid balances. Unpaid balances can range from something as minimal as a parking violation to something as large as unpaid tuition.

The new regulations require colleges to release transcripts to former students for semesters where they received federal loans, grants, or work-study funds and paid their full balance. The only transcripts a school is allowed to hold are those from a semester where the students owe money. Although not an outright ban on the previous rules, the new regulations will apply to all schools where undergraduate students receive some kind of federal financial aid—that is, nearly every college and university in the country.

Eleven states (New York, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Washington, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut, and Oregon) already ban transcripts in all or most cases. According to the Student Borrower Protection Center, approximately a quarter of students live in states that already ban transcripts withholding.

Unfortunately, some colleges and universities don’t accept federal aid; therefore, the new set of regulations doesn’t apply to them. Education experts have a history of criticizing authorities for not having better handling of these schools.

“Some of these schools exist that way because they would never qualify, and that’s usually because they provide very low value to students, unfortunately,” said Edward Conroy, a senior policy advisor at the progressive think tank New America. “Not in all cases, but a lot of these programs are not lifting people out of poverty, they’re not providing a route to middle-class jobs or middle-class income, and so I think sometimes they’re of questionable value.”

College transcripts are used by students, employers, and colleges. Colleges use transcripts to determine if students qualify for transfer credit and certain types of financial aid. Some places of employment require applicants to submit transcripts to see if the skills and qualifications on their resume align with their educational background. Transcript withholding is a debt collection tactic used by colleges and universities, but on average, schools collect less than seven cents on the dollar for the debts for which they withhold transcripts.