Who Has the Hot Potato? Navigating the Fragmented World of College Finance

At many colleges, the student financial experience can feel like a game of “hot potato,” with students getting bounced between offices when they seek help.

Who actually “owns” the student financial experience? It’s a question I’ve been thinking quite a bit about as I prepare for the 2025 Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance (HEFWA) Summit, where I’ll be co-presenting a session titled “Who Has the Hot Potato: A Conversation About the Student Financial Experience.” The metaphor of the hot potato is fitting: too often, a student’s question about financing their education gets tossed from the financial aid office, to the bursar, to academic advising, to who-knows-where. Everyone handles a piece of the problem for a moment, but no one holds onto it for long. The result? The student is left confused and unsupported, unsure of where to turn next.

This fragmented approach to college finances isn’t anyone’s intentional design—it’s an accident of siloed systems and historical divisions of labor. Financial aid, student accounts, scholarships, the registrar, academic advising, and other departments each manage their own slice of the student’s financial puzzle. From the inside, each office might be doing a great job on its piece. But from the student’s perspective, it feels like a disjointed maze. It’s no surprise that only 26% of students say they’re fully satisfied with their school’s tools for managing their student experience, and 92% of students wish all their financial services were in one place. Right now, that “one place” too often ends up being the student themselves, trying to bridge the gaps on their own.

The Cost of a Fragmented Financial Experience

When the burden is on students to navigate fragmented resources, the consequences can be dire. Students can miss critical requirements or deadlines (like filing verification paperwork or paying an outstanding balance) simply because they didn’t know where to look or whom to ask. Small misunderstandings snowball into big problems. I’ve seen students drop out over unpaid library fees that blocked their registration, or simply because they misunderstood loan terms. In fact, financial uncertainty is the leading cause of student dropouts in college today. Even those who stay enrolled often carry immense stress: 61% of students say the stress of paying for college negatively affects their academic performance. This is the human cost of an antiquated and piecemeal system.

Fragmentation also hits hardest on those who can least afford it. First-generation and low-income students often lack a safety net of family experience with college finances. For them, getting the runaround between offices isn’t just a time sink—it can be the moment where college starts to feel impossible. Every additional form, every contradictory email, every unanswered question is reinforcing a message that they don’t belong. It’s an equity issue: when support is fragmented, the students with the least financial literacy or support at home are the ones most likely to fall through the cracks. (Recent data backs this up: only 25% of students can correctly answer basic financial literacy questions, with those under 21 and from low-income backgrounds scoring lowest).

Connecting the Dots: A Unified Approach

So how do we stop playing hot potato with students’ financial well-being? The first step is to take ownership. Institutions need to decide that the student financial experience is just as critical as the academic experience—and resource it accordingly. That means breaking down silos between departments and creating a unified front of support. Some schools are making strides: for example, I helped launch a one-stop financial wellness center at my previous institution, so students didn’t have to trek to three different offices for help. Many others are creating “financial wellness hubs” or cross-functional teams dedicated to holistic student support.

Technology has a big role to play in connecting these dots. We need systems that talk to each other and give both students and staff a full picture in one place. (The private sector has figured this out—think about how your banking app shows you a 360° view of your finances.) Yet on campus, critical information is often spread across separate portals for financial aid, billing, registration, and advising. No wonder students are frustrated. It doesn’t have to be this way. New platforms like Arbol are emerging to unify the student financial journey, pulling together data and tasks from multiple offices and providing personalized guidance at scale. The idea is to ensure no student’s question falls through the cracks—every “hot potato” gets caught and handled.

The human element is just as important. While technology can automate reminders and flag at-risk students, we still need compassionate people to engage in the moments that matter. Financial wellness leaders (like many attending HEFWA) are uniquely positioned to champion a culture shift on campus. We can train peer mentors, partner with faculty to spot struggling students, and use data to proactively reach out before a missed payment becomes a lost semester. It’s about creating a safety net of both people and tools, so that whenever a student reaches out for help—no matter where—they get guided to the answers and support they need.

From Fragmentation to Financial Wellness

As we explore in our HEFWA Summit session, improving financial outcomes begins with rethinking how we serve students. We have to move from a reactive and fragmented model to a proactive and unified one. The institutions that do this are already seeing results. At East Carolina University, a new Financial Wellness Hub (led by one of my co-presenters, Kevin Sutton) brings together resources across campus and even extends support to alumni and staff, recognizing that the whole community benefits from financial empowerment. These efforts show that when you treat student finance not as a hot potato to be passed off, but as a shared responsibility, students respond positively.

The fragmented nature of paying for college is a big, knotty problem—there’s no doubt about it. But it’s one we can solve by working together and keeping students at the center of our design. I’m encouraged by the momentum I see: the growing recognition that someone has to catch the hot potato and run with it. By connecting systems, coordinating our teams, and scaling up personal guidance, we can replace the current maze with a clear pathway. Students deserve clarity, support, and a sense that their institution has their back financially. It’s on us to deliver that.

If you’re attending the HEFWA Summit, I hope you’ll join our conversation about the student financial experience. And if not, let’s keep this dialogue going beyond the conference. The more minds tackling this issue, the faster we can build a future where every student can navigate college finances with confidence. After all, the goal isn’t just to stop dropping the potato—it’s to take it out of play entirely, by redesigning the game for good.

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