Some 21,000 former students with student debt are living at unknown addresses abroad, the Higher Education Press Agency reported this month. Student finance provider DUO cannot reach them and is missing out on 170 million euros in repayments.

Other media outlets picked up the story. What they found especially bizarre was the suggestion that student debts apparently expire if former students spend enough time abroad. But that was based on a misunderstanding.

Phone calls

DUO has been busy fielding calls this past week, a spokesperson says. Former students called asking why they still had to repay their debt. Hadn’t they been living abroad for more than five years?

That was the interpretation published by the Algemeen Dagblad: after five years abroad, student debt would supposedly expire due to the statute of limitations. Het Parool repeated that claim, adding that it concerned the “entire” debt.

That is incorrect. Debts only expire if DUO fails to pursue repayment for five years — but DUO does continue to pursue those debts. Students who miss a payment deadline are immediately notified, including those living abroad.

Claim expires

Problems only arise when a former student cannot be located. In that case, the notices never arrive, and that can lead to a legal dispute over when a student debt actually expires.

In any case, the entire amount never expires — at most, only the portion DUO was unable to collect. The remainder of the debt stays in place. If you return to the Netherlands, DUO will be able to find you again and you will still have to repay the outstanding balance, including collection fees.

Trying to let your entire debt expire is difficult. Under the current system, repayment can stretch over 35 years, meaning the final claim would only expire after 40 years. And even then, success is not guaranteed.

Tracked down through Facebook

The Ministry of Education has won an appeal case centered on that statute of limitations. The ruling by the Court of Appeal in The Hague was published on the same day as the AD article. If a former student does not cooperate, the court stated, allowing the debt to expire is unreasonable and the entire debt remains payable.

The case was brought by a former student now living in Germany. She had left the Netherlands back in 2003, but still had an outstanding student debt of 34,000 euros. In Germany, she completed her medical degree and is now training to become an anesthesiologist. But as far as DUO was concerned, she remained untraceable all that time. She repaid only one monthly installment.

DUO eventually found the woman on Facebook in 2019 and contacted her through the platform, asking her to provide her new address. She subsequently received a hefty claim: she must repay her entire student debt, plus interest and additional charges.

The woman “failed to meet her legal responsibility to report changes of address,” the court now writes. She therefore cannot invoke the statute of limitations. According to the court, that would be “unacceptable.”

Legislative proposal

The government wants to make such legal cases effectively impossible in the future and is therefore introducing a legislative proposal. That proposal was also the source of all the news coverage — and the misunderstandings.

Under the proposed rules, providing a correspondence address will become mandatory, and to be safe, the statute of limitations period will be extended to ten years.

In addition, DUO will be allowed to cooperate with government agencies abroad, making it easier to track down former students with debt. But DUO is already quite successful at that, the spokesperson emphasizes. The vast majority of debtors are ultimately found, he says.

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.