What Campus Business Offices Are Carrying Into 2027

Campus business offices are carrying more than they were a few years ago. Federal policy keeps shifting. Fraud keeps getting more sophisticated. And students and families expect to pay the way they do everything else. Over two days at Virtual CampusConnect 2026, institutional business office leaders worked through exactly that. If you missed a session, here is what happened and where to re-watch.

“The moment a student sees a bill they cannot pay is not a billing event. It is the moment where retention is won or lost.” That is how Jackie Strohbehn, president of Nelnet Campus Commerce, opened the event.

The stakes are well documented. In Ellucian’s 2024 Student Voice Report, a national survey of 1,500 students, 59% of students said they had considered dropping out because of financial stress, and 19% of surveyed students had dropped out, with financial uncertainty cited as the leading cause. Read the Ellucian survey findings.

Our product team also shared where Horizon is headed and how clients can help shape what comes next. Registered attendees can watch the sessions on Whova through November 20.

Liz Clark, vice president of policy and research at NACUBO, walked through federal policy with a clear message for the business office: headlines are not compliance guidance, and executive actions are not always final. Here is where federal student aid funding stands in the House FY27 proposal:

Sources: NASFAA and Community College Daily.

Jonathan Neff of the University of Montana System, Erik Brown, business information security officer at NCC, and Ruth Harpool of CampusGuard agreed on one point: no single signal proves fraud, but patterns do. The more useful takeaway was about who has to be in the room. Ruth urged business offices to act as the quarterback, bringing financial aid, IT, and the registrar to the same table.

Read our article on how to detect and prevent ghost student fraud for more information.

Raul Matos, senior product owner for NCC Storefront, showed what departments have built, and it goes far past T-shirts and tickets. A mail room put its stamp counter online. A campus farm sells honey. A technology licensing office rebuilt a government fee schedule with more than 500 products. Athletics sells banner sponsorships priced by sport, and a student newspaper sells ad packages by buyer.

The advice from the session: map your business process before you build, involve your ERP early, start with a few high-impact cases, and bring end users in early.

During the conference, Nelnet Campus Commerce donated $10,000 to three institutions that attended. We’re glad to give back to the campuses that serve students every day. Congratulations to: 

• Prairie State College 

• Des Moines Area Community College 

• Wytheville Community College 

Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the event: PayPal + Venmo, Convera, GradGuard, and Discover. And thank you to our presenting institutions, the University of Montana System, Rutgers, and Pensacola State College, for sharing what is working on their campuses.

Save the date for CampusConnect in Chicago, June 14–16, 2027, at The Drake. Registration is open: https://campuscommerce.com/campusconnect/.