Like many students, Pratham Hegde, 19, was attracted to Arizona State University for the world-class education it offered. He picked the Tempe campus with the help of an education agent back home in India, and joined as one of the more than 12,000 international students on ASU campuses where 181,000 study.
Each student has a unique journey to higher education. But Hegde hit on a part of that journey that is pretty universal for many undergraduate students.
“I had zero financial experience. Everything was new to me,” Hegde said.
As higher ed becomes more expensive, students like Hegde need more from their institutions: more payment flexibility, more targeted communications, more guidance, and more tools to help make it easier to understand the total cost of higher education and act on it.
Institutions get that, and are taking actionable steps to bring higher ed’s many stakeholders and pieces together to help students reach their goals. That was clear at Flywire Fusion, Flywire’s first-ever U.S. client conference, where Hegde was part of a panel discussion led by Flywire’s EVP of Global Education Sharon Butler with fellow ASU students from the U.S. and China also adding perspective.
“Everything we do is about student success. It’s their voice that matters the most," Butler said.
Over three days, more than 100 attendees from public and private institutions gathered in Phoenix to talk about how they are making the financial path to higher education smoother for all students — whether they live in the U.S. or come to study from somewhere else in the world – and learn more about how Flywire is continually innovating technology to help them do just that. Flywire Fusion was a chance, as CMO and GM of U.S. Education Allison MacLeod put it, “to celebrate your success and talk about the most pressing issues you face today.”
Clients showcase success with Flywire Student Financial Software
“We’re here to help institutions make the financial journey as seamless as possible, so that students can continue on their academic journey,” Flywire CTO David King said in talking with the audience about Flywire’s product roadmap and vision alongside Senior Director of Product Corey Rethage.
As evidence of that success, more than 100 Flywire clients are using Flywire's Student Financial Software (SFS) functionality to smooth the increasingly complex parts of that journey for students.
100+ SFS clients who have together:
Activated 620,000+ payment plans
Collected $277,000+ in past-due debt
Saved $56+ million in pre-collection debt
Helped keep more than 139,000 students enrolled
At their first Flywire Fusion conference, clients from across the U.S. really grasped how much Flywire is thinking about innovation beyond international payments to help address industry-wide challenges, and how central this mission is to the product development process. That was perhaps most clear when a team of on-site Flywire engineers built seven new enhancements picked by attendees at the start of the event in less than 24 hours.
President and COO Rob Orgel, thanking clients for their ongoing collaboration and openness to share new ways to better serve students, highlighted the many achievements borne of partnering together, including new solutions such as Third-Party Invoicing.
Clients talked about how Flywire is helping them to tackle big things such as:
- Aligning teams across campus with a "one stop" for questions from students
- Keeping tuition payments coming in and students out of collections
- Better predicting cash flow by making it easier for students to enroll in payment plans
But what also seemed to really impress people were details that included:
- A billing and payment experience for U.S. domestic students accessible entirely in Spanish
- The thought put into automating the refund process for account balances via ACH
- Integrations to ensure everything is posted directly into the institutions’ system of record
- And so much more
3 things to know from Flywire Fusion
We will bring you updates of all content from Flywire Fusion over the coming weeks.
For those who could not make the trip, here is a birds-eye view of what happened in Phoenix.
1. Today's students have different needs that demand bold action by finance teams
In a two-minute history lesson on higher education technology, Flywire’s King, who has been working in the industry since 1997, took the audience on a journey familiar to many there — from the dial-up Internet days, through the first on-premise systems that allowed for online payment processing, to today. He explained that meeting the expectations and needs of digital-native students will take faster and continuous innovation – with the audience wide-eyed and nodding heads in agreement.
Deep knowledge, connection and care for higher education, alongside collaboration from partner institutions, drive Flywire’s product roadmap, Flywire’s Rethage explained to the audience, which includes things like providing more analytics and insight into student behavior, deeper system integration, and more self-service opportunities for students and institution staff.
"You have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of students. Each of you has the power to drive change. We want to help you help more students,” he said.
2. Institutions need new models to serve students and contend with external pressures
Fear often prevents schools from making changes that may affect different teams across campus to drive “continuous innovation,” as Flywire’s Senior Manager of Deployment Consulting Charmaine Daniels pointed out. To that end, Texas A&M showed the benefit of cutting through that fear to make the finance team an innovator for the entire institution. As one example, bringing together Flywire with other technologies to drive a “One Stop” model has helped them to better educate students on the total cost of a degree, as well as give actionable options when they fall behind on payments. This has increased collections of past-due tuition by millions.
“Find a partner who is forward looking," said Jennifer Lightfoot, Executive Director, Student Business Services at Texas A&M. “What does the next generation look like? What does the next set of students look like? We need someone by our side.”
3. There are many parts of the financial process to be innovated, and they are not all a massive lift
The more than a dozen institutions who shared stories, successes and advice at the event detailed several ways they are making education accessible and more affordable – for instance:
- Every valedictorian in its hometown campus of Boston is eligible for a full cost of tuition scholarship at Northeastern University.
- To help retain students with past-due tuition bills, the enrollment threshold was increased from $50 to $1,500 at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
- Eligible students who had fallen behind on payments, but close to graduation, are awarded retention effort grants to get them through at Texas A&M - San Antonio, increasing the persistence rate by 5%.
- Working with admissions to communicate about billing processes at the University of Connecticut before enrollment, and presenting the payment portal early on in the process.
Connecting and collaborating to move forward
With the variety of session content — from optimizing SFS, to the changing financial literacy and goals of the next generation, to the strategies to combat to the enrollment cliff and the effect of the foreign exchange (FX) rate on tuition for international students, clients came away with a clear sense of how to solve the problems in front of them — and with renewed energy for tackling it all with the backing of their newfound network of higher education friends.
“It is great meeting all the people who do the same things we do, to connect," said Erica Nukaya, Assistant Controller of Students and Grants at Reed College. “The sessions have been great and the facility is lovely.”