It is a problem that gets worse over time. The more time that passes, the less likely it is that a student will pay their past due account.  

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A/R has been increasing in colleges and universities across the country over the last few years and the 2024 transcript hold ban is likely to make the problem worse.

52% of institutions reported an increase in student A/R 

33% of all institutions hold more than $5m in student A/R

Past due balances often make up a small percentage of the student body, but take up a considerable amount of time from the student accounts office - 10% of staff time is spent trying to recover past due accounts. Chasing students is often manual, time consuming and frustrating.  It feels like a priority but rarely makes it to the top of the to-do list.  So it often gets ignored.

There just isn’t enough time in the day.

But the repercussions are real: Students who miss payments stop-out of college and, when universities are unable to serve them, they often drop out entirely.  The impact on a school’s financial stability is doubled by this impact on enrollment.

At the root of the problem is how to get students to pay attention and to pay at all. Student engagement is a pervasive problem - ask anyone who works in a student accounts office how often they hear “I didn’t get the email,” and they will just laugh.  It is a constant theme. 

The problem is solvable.  Sending the right message at the right time and via the right channel can turn things around.  It’s a quality not quantity game: the subject lines have to be crisp, the call to action in the email clear, the channels varied between email and SMS.  Students need to be able to pay or set up a payment plan in one step, not several, and they need to do it from their phones.

If we want students to do something hard, we have to do everything we can to make it easy.

This is why we think deeply about getting the cadence right, the calendar right, the channel right and the words right.  We know we have to work quickly and that when we do, more students pay, more students re-enroll, and more students avoid collections.

Want to learn more? Reach out to us!

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