PayPal and Venmo want to make it easier for students to pay tuition.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | neirfy\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Students at some U.S. universities are now able to pay their tuition through Venmo or its parent company, PayPal, the financial technology giant announced Wednesday<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n PayPal has partnered with three top tuition-payment companies, which collectively service over a thousand universities, to allow students to pay tuition and fees through PayPal and Venmo, according to the announcement. Students at a handful of institutions, like Michigan State University and Texas Tech University, can already use those platforms to pay their institutions, and PayPal said it expects more to join in the coming year.<\/p>\n The goal of these partnerships, the company stated, is to make paying tuition more convenient for students, many of whom already use money-transfer apps like PayPal and Venmo in their daily lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cStudents and families want the flexibility to use payment methods that fit how they manage their money, while institutions need those options to work within the systems and processes their teams already rely on,\u201d Don Smith, senior vice president and general manager of integrated payments at Illumia, one of the education-payment platforms PayPal is working with, said in the announcement. \u201cThis integration helps schools expand choice in a practical way, improving the payer experience without creating a disconnected path for campus teams.\u201d<\/p>\n To pay this way, students will go to their institutions\u2019 regular payment portals, where they will be given the option to pay via PayPal or Venmo, among regular card options.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the company\u2019s first foray into higher education. PayPal already has agreements with the Big Ten and Big 12 athletic conferences to allow institutions to make revenue-sharing payments to athletes via Venmo.<\/p>\n Bryan Dickson, director of education policy at the National Association of College and University Business Officers, said this feels like a natural progression for how colleges handle tuition payments, following the transition from paper checks to electronic payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInstitutions want to meet the demand of the market. Just as we\u2019ve seen institutions adjust to the needs of the students when it comes to housing, dining, activities and campus services\u2014PayPal, Venmo and other tools are fairly ubiquitous these days,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of Protect Borrowers, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting predatory lending, said he was concerned about the offering in light of evidence from a 2020 report<\/a> that some unaccredited, for-profit workforce-training programs advertised PayPal Credit as a way for their students to pay tuition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n