“What colleges really struggle with is competitive advantages, especially when it comes to private versus public education and the increased cost associated with that,” she said.

The College Board found that the average tuition and fees paid for a private college in the 2015-2016 school year was $32,405.

“If a person graduates a university and has a lot of student debt, goes out in the job market and can’t find a job, suddenly that’s a big burden for that student and for that family,” Ferguson said. “How are they going to pay that back if they don’t have that job they thought a four-year degree would get them?”

Schools that purchase the coverage set the terms for students to qualify. “If the student graduates within a certain number of years, if they hit a certain GPA milestone and they’re actively looking for a job that will be, say, 30 hours a week,” Ferguson explained, the school will make loan payments on the student’s behalf for as long as his or her salary is below a certain threshold.

For example, a college could offer to make student loan payments up to $200 a month until his or her salary reaches $40,000 a year.

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The HELP program also provides reimbursement for college expenses if students can’t finish the semester. (Photo: iStock)

“This takes the burden off the student and it hopefully keeps their credit clean. As we know, defaulting on a student loan is darn near impossible, and that’s debt that people can carry for a long time. It could prevent them from purchasing a car or renting an apartment, those monthly bills that everybody has when they’re just getting started.”

Not every student has aspirations of earning $100,000 a year, Ferguson said. Some students just want to continue their education, or they choose career paths with more intangible benefits than money, like ministry or social work or art.

Ferguson said the program could make these payments until the loan balance is paid off as long as the student meets the criteria set by the school.

Recruit and retain students

“Colleges want to buy this kind of coverage because statistics show that they will get more students,” Ferguson. “Everything being equal at two competing colleges, but one of them [offers] this HELP program they’d be more likely to consider going to a facility that has this in place.”

In addition to recruiting advantages, the program also helps colleges retain students, Ferguson said. “Colleges really don’t have any trouble retaining students when they get to be a junior,” she said, “but there’s a big drop off between freshman and sophomore year, and then between sophomore and junior year.”

The HELP program also provides reimbursement for college expenses if students can’t finish the semester. If a student is in an accident or falls ill, or if they have to return home to care for an ailing parent, the program will take over remaining tuition payments for that school year.

“It happens more than you would guess,” she said.

According to the 2016 Condition of Education report from the National Center for Education Statistics, 80 percent of full-time students enrolled at a four-year institution in 2013 returned the following year. Sixty percent of students who began a full-time undergraduate degree in 2008 graduated in six years or less.

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