TAMPA, Fla. — Student loans seem to last forever. A mountain of debt that's really, really hard to climb. What if you're also stuck paying thousands of dollars for a semester of school you couldn't even finish?
That's the worry for many higher education students and their families. As students move into dorms this week at campuses across Tampa Bay, they're wondering what the semester holds and how long in-person classes will last.
The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill moved classes online after more than 100 students tested positive for COVID-19 just one week after classes started.
One way families are protecting their expensive investment into higher education is turning to tuition insurance. Companies like GradGuard offer housing and tuition insurance and have rewritten their policies to include COVID-19.
"It covers a complete medical withdrawal...it happens when a doctor says you're sick and you need to go home and leave school for a little bit," said Natalie Tarangioli, a marketing specialist at GradGuard. The tuition policy now includes COVID-19 on its list of medical issues. It didn't cover the pandemic back in the spring of this year. There are limitations to how COVID-19 is covered though.
"It doesn't include the fear of attending because of COVID, this doesn't include my schoolwork is now online and campus is closed because that's not a medical withdrawal," said Tarangioli.
Without tuition insurance, students are on the hook paying for their semester regardless of what happens because of the coronavirus on campus. For example, at the University of South Florida, students must withdraw by the fifth day of the term in order to receive a full refund. They get a 25-percent refund if they withdraw before the first month of the term.
The demand for tuition insurance has increased since COVID-19 forced students all across the country to pack up, move home and continue their classes online.
"Before coronavirus was a pandemic, we had about 350 partner schools...Since then, we've been partnering with five to 10 schools per week and we're seeing interest on the consumer level like we've never seen before," said Tarangioli.
Some schools partner directly with tuition insurance companies to provide a discounted partner rate, but families can also purchase the insurance directly through an insurance company even if the school doesn't partner with one.
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