Nobody enrolls in college with the goal of dropping out. But a high percentage of new college students step onto campus in a tenuous financial position.

This is no secret, and U.S. institutions have spent years developing the infrastructure to support students in paying for college.  But a bigger problem has been lying beneath the surface, preventing talented young adults from connecting with the resources that have been created to support them through graduation.

That problem: the complexity of financial services in higher education.

Consider that new students often have at least four separate online accounts that are crucial to their ability to pay for college, including everything from tuition to financial aid to FAFSA to scholarships. It’s often unclear to students how each of these financial nodes connect to one another, and what the full scale of their obligations actually looks like. That’s before they even get to their personal cost-of-living.

Somewhere amidst this complexity, students disengage from the process. They lose confidence that they’ll ever understand how much they owe and when they’ll owe it. They’re not empowered to own the process, even though there are resources in place to help them through trouble spots.

Arbol is stepping into that challenge, with the recognition that improving the retention rate at American colleges and universities starts with engaging the students. Our dynamic, personalized plans integrate the information from those different offices into one place, and present the information in an intuitive way that is easy to understand.

When students lean into the tool, the magic is immediate. Arbol is tracking an average of three proactive steps that users take to create financial stability, from applying to work-study programs to tapping into college financial support. When students have a trusted and intuitive command center, they take meaningful steps toward financial viability.

The same process of integrating information creates value for college staff members and presidents as well. Arbol is already able to generate multi-layered reports about groups of students, showing them at different levels of financial distress, and allowing colleges to proactively reach out to those who might be at risk of dropping out. College executives are taking our system-level reports to their foundations and boards and advocating for resources to keep them on campus.

At its heart, Arbol is a wayfinder that activates the best intentions of students and colleges. By rebuilding student financial services from the ground up, our plans clear away the chaos and replace it with something that’s personalized, scalable and effective.

Want to learn more? Reach out to David Gonzalez at david@growarbol.com.