Paying for College is Changing: How Institutions Need to Keep Up
July 31, 2026A student walks into the campus store. They don’t have cash. They don’t reach for a card. They open Venmo. Meanwhile, back in the business office, someone is still manually processing a paper check for a tuition payment. Both of those things are happening on the same campus, at the same time, in 2026.
That gap, between how students expect to pay and how institutions are set up to collect, is exactly what Laura Newell-McLaughlin has spent 33 years working to close. As the newly appointed Chief Operating Officer at Illumia, Laura oversees the business lines, support services, and supply chain teams that serve clients across higher education and healthcare. The Higher Ed Geek Podcast sat down with her at Illumia Momentum in Nashville to talk about the future of campus payments, the shifting economics of higher education, and why the walls between admissions, financial aid, and the business office are finally starting to come down.
A payment should be a non-event
Laura’s framing for where payments need to go is simple and clarifying: making a payment of any kind should require no effort, no friction, and no second thought.
“It should be a non-event for you to make a payment of any kind. Whether it’s a stored value, whether it’s a check… whether it’s an open loop transaction, closed loop, how do we facilitate all the different types of transactions that will take place?”
That means meeting students where they already are. Venmo is the everyday payment tool for most students today, the same way PayPal was for an earlier generation. If a campus can’t accept it, that’s a friction point. And friction, at any touchpoint, is a signal that the institution hasn’t fully caught up to the student.
Laura also flagged the next frontier: device-less transactions. The idea that you could buy something on campus without a point-of-sale terminal at all, just as Amazon and some airports are already piloting, is closer than most institutions realize. “Things are moving and trending really fast,” she said. “I think that’s going to be here to stay.”
Students are thinking like investors
The shift in how students think about paying for college is just as significant as the shift in how they expect to pay at the point of sale. Laura sees a generation that is far more deliberate about the economics of higher education than any before it.
“Students are really starting to think about it from a financial perspective and return on investment. It’s not a ‘I take out a full loan or I pay in cash’ anymore. It is starting to get smarter about, do I want to be paying for this education in 10 years?”
That shift is driving demand for more flexible payment options: payment plans, sponsor payments from employers, 529 funds, scholarships, and small loans used strategically in combination. “Buy now, pay later” as a concept has moved from retail into higher education, and students are embracing it. Laura has watched this play out across three decades, from when payment plans were purely a receivables tool to today, when they’re a student recruitment and retention strategy.
The silos are finally starting to crack
For years, the admissions office, the financial aid office, and the business office have operated with separate goals, separate metrics, and separate conversations. Admissions focuses on enrollment numbers. The business office focuses on collections. Financial aid sits in between, often without the visibility or authority to connect the two.
Laura sees that starting to change, and believes the current enrollment pressures facing higher education are accelerating it.
“I’m starting to see that dialogue take place. Thinking about how can we talk about affordability upfront, earlier, that encourages enrollment, but brings together that financial aid component and the business office component.”
When those teams align around the student experience rather than their individual metrics, institutions become more responsive to what students actually need. Affordability conversations that used to happen late, or not at all, can now happen at the front end of the enrollment process. That changes what’s possible for both the student and the institution.
The advice Laura gives higher ed leaders right now
With policy changes, enrollment challenges, AI disruption, and shifting student expectations all converging at once, Laura’s closing advice was grounded in the one constant through all of it.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the students. Focus on them. Meet them where they are.”
That means building payment infrastructure flexible enough to accept however a student needs to pay. It means removing friction from every financial touchpoint, from the campus store to the tuition bill. And it means giving the departments that serve students the shared visibility and tools to work together rather than in isolation.
That’s the responsibility Laura and the Illumia team take seriously: sitting in the middle of a complex payments ecosystem and making it simple for institutions to do right by their students.
Listen to the full discussion here or wherever you get your podcasts!
Want to learn how Illumia can help your institution modernize payments and improve the student financial experience?
