You’ve probably heard about the FAFSA meltdown, declining enrollment, and the ongoing turmoil at the Department of Education. But these are symptoms of something deeper: a growing disconnect in the financial relationship between students and the institutions that aim to support them. A crisis of trust, of transparency, of what it really means to be ready for the future, and if a traditional degree offers it.

At Meadow, we believe that the student financial experience — how students pay for school — is one of the most overlooked and broken parts of higher education today. And yet, we believe it holds the key to rebuilding confidence in the value of higher education and ensuring more students get a college degree..

The real lessons of college

If you went to college, think back: the lessons that shaped you probably weren’t confined to the classroom. You learned how to live independently. How to make friends that didn’t have your shared history. How to get stuff done with (often) little sleep. How to solve problems. How to “adult.”

Paying for college is, for most, the first major expense young adults incur and and marks the beginning of their financial lives. This size of a financial obligation comes with a whole set of lessons on its own. Small mistakes — like overlooking financial aid, forgetting to sign a document, missing a payment, or misunderstanding a bill — can cause their education to grind to a halt, and sometimes never start up again. I know this firsthand: as a student, I once missed a payment deadline and got locked out of registration until my balance was resolved. That moment stuck with me and it’s what inspired me to start Meadow. 

Now imagine being 18, the first in your family to consider, let alone attend college, and seeing a sticker price for an amount of money you have a hard time comprehending. Or once you’re there, trying to make sense of a billing portal designed over a decade ago. Or calling the financial aid office only to be told to call the student accounts office and then to be told by someone else juggling hundreds of inquiries that they’ll have to look into it and get back to you. These are not lessons, they’re reflections of staff doing their best with a system in dire need of reimagination. 

This isn’t just a student problem — it’s an institutional one

Today, 59% of students say they’ve considered dropping out due to financial stress. At the same time, three out of four colleges carry more than $1 million in unpaid student accounts receivables.

This is often framed as a cash flow issue for institutions — but it’s so much more than that. It’s a breakdown in communication, clarity, and technology. When students don’t understand what they owe or can’t manage payments on time, everyone loses.

Importantly, this isn’t the fault of colleges or universities. They are doing everything they can with limited resources, outdated tools, and shrinking budgets. The problem is that innovation in this space hasn’t kept pace with the complexity schools now face and the way that today’s students consume information, engage and behave. Financial systems built decades ago were never designed to handle today’s challenges or to exist on today’s devices — and institutions have been left to bridge that gap on their own.

The result is a model that leans on confusing costs, clunky billing systems, and punitive collections. It’s not just outdated — it’s actively detrimental. And it’s why new solutions are so urgently needed.

A better system is possible

We started Meadow in 2022 to reimagine how students experience the financial side of college — from the first moment they ask, “Can I afford this?” to the final tuition payment before graduation because we actually know that the student experience is a financial experience.

We began with Meadow Price, the first modern Net Price Calculator that gives students a highly accurate and personalized view of their true cost after aid. Nearly a million students have used it, revealing that most will pay over 40% less than the published price.

But that’s just the beginning. We built Meadow Pay to bring student billing, payment plans, and engagement into the 21st century — and Meadow Pre to help institutions recover unpaid balances using carrots, not sticks. 

Just a few years later, we now work with over 170 colleges and universities, from smaller privates and community colleges to large public flagships. Our growth has been the biggest validation that the work we’re doing matters and that colleges and universities – whose main goal is to do right by their students – are hungry for something better. Together, we’re modernizing the systems that students interact with most — and that institutions depend on to operate sustainably.

This is just the beginning

This week, we announced our $14 million Series A, led by Matrix Partners and joined by incredible investors who believe in a better future for students and higher ed institutions alike. This funding will help us expand our reach, deepen our product capabilities, and continue delivering clarity and compassion at scale.

But more than that, it’s fuel for a movement. A call to technologists, university leaders, and policymakers: the student financial experience is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Once we recognize that the student experience is a financial one, we can uncover the power it has to determine a student’s future.

Students don’t want to fall behind on payments any more than schools want them to, but with information so opaque and processes so complex things fall through the cracks. Let’s give students a financial experience that is as easy as it should be – one that helps them make confident decisions, enables schools to better serve them, and ultimately makes education easier to access.

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