How Academy DA gave every prospective student a way to pay, and cut manual servicing errors by 90%.

A new dental assisting school in Columbus faced the classic startup-school payment problem: pay in full or take a predatory private loan. Here's how one flexible payment infrastructure gave every prospective student a viable path to enrollment, and gave the founder a hands-off servicing system.

Academy DA

Dental assisting · Columbus, OH · Founder-led

Let's chat Talk to sales

90%

fewer manual servicing errors

100%

student acceptance rate — every applicant found a viable payment path

Zero

credit checks required

Adaptable

deposit and repayment terms, set by school and student together

"There's no credit check, no additional fees to student. I set the deposit amount I'd like to receive and students choose the repayment that best fits their budget. This system allows me to be adaptable to any situation. I can assist every student as needed."

Dwayne FewFounder · Academy DA

01 · The academy

Who they are

Academy DA is a dental assisting school based in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Dwayne Few. Establishing a brand-new dental assisting school comes with a specific stack of hurdles: certification, licensing, regulatory requirements, and the added wrinkle that most third-party lenders won't extend financing to schools without established financial records. Every one of those hurdles hits the student first, not the school.

02 · The student who couldn't afford dental school before Lumion

Why "adaptable" matters

Every school has the prospective student who wanted to enroll but couldn't. In dental assisting, that student profile is often a career-changer, someone working service or retail while trying to move into healthcare. They have income coming in. What they don't have is $5,000 to $7,000 sitting in a bank account. And they don't have the credit history that third-party lenders demand.

Before Lumion, Academy DA's only options for that student were: pay in full, take out a private loan at 18–29% interest, or walk away. Most walked away.

With Lumion, that student now has a third option. Dwayne sets the deposit he needs from the school's cash-flow perspective. The student picks the repayment schedule that fits their budget. No credit check. No fees. No third-party lender extracting predatory interest. The plan is built between the school and the student, on terms both can honor.

03 · The startup-school payment problem

What was broken before

Before Lumion, Academy DA faced the classic new-school payment stack:

The pain the team could name

Manual invoicing and receipt tracking, which introduced error rates measured in double digits
Reliance on third-party lenders who wouldn't underwrite students with limited credit histories
Interest rates on private loans between 18–29%, which pushed students into hardship before their first class
No way to be "adaptable" to individual student situations — either the loan approved on the lender's terms, or the student walked away

A new dental assisting school in a competitive local market can't afford to lose students at the payment stage. But Dwayne didn't have the tools to solve for it on his own.

04 · The playbook that made it work

Three moves that turned "pay in full or walk away" into "pay on terms we build together"

Payment PlansIn-House ServicingNo Credit CheckAdaptable DepositsHands-Off Collections

A reliable payment management system with responsive, human-centric support.

Dwayne partnered with Lumion for a payment management infrastructure Academy DA didn't have to build or run. Responsive, human-centric support meant every student issue got a real answer, quickly.

Payment plans that students build based on their financial capacity.

No two students are exactly the same. Academy DA's payment plans reflect that. Dwayne sets the deposit he needs. The student picks the repayment schedule that fits their budget. Every plan built between the school and the student on terms both can honor.

Clearer communication: no credit checks, zero fees, minimal down payments.

Dwayne developed clearer communication with prospective students emphasizing the accessibility of the payment path — no credit check, no fees, minimal down payment. Making education financially feasible for students who thought it wasn't.

05 · The scoreboard

What Academy DA's numbers say

90% reduction in manual servicing errors from automated tracking and integrated receipts
100% student acceptance rate: every applicant found a viable path to a payment plan
Zero credit checks required (student credit history is never a barrier)
Zero collections headcount added to the Academy DA team
Adaptable terms configured by school and student together (no two plans identical)
Third-party predatory loans replaced with in-house Lumion servicing

The pattern for other new / early-stage career schools: the student who can't afford your program at full price often has income coming in. They just need a payment structure that fits their budget instead of one that fits a national lender's underwriting model.

06 · What's next

What's next

Academy DA continues expanding in the Columbus market. Every new applicant now gets access to the same "adaptable, no-credit-check, in-house-serviced" payment path that Dwayne built with Lumion from day one.

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