<p>We just got some information in the mail about a Tuition Refund Plan that awards the difference between what the school will refund and what is actually paid if the the student has to leave school because of illness or injury. (It only awards 60% for withdrawl due to a mental or nervous disorder.) I had never heard of this before but I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this, if they have opted to take it or not and if its something to shop around for or if going with the carrier that the school endorses is the way to go.</p>
<p>My children’s private (primary) school offers a TRP. We pass on it, but it’s true, if we had to pull them out of school, we’d lose the tuition paid. That said, if we have to pull them out of school, that means we’re facing some serious catastrophy that would make the tuition the least of my worries. That’s just where I land on it.</p>
<p>Paper shredder, usually, along with all those care packages mailings, buying linens and so on. Once they enroll, you get all kinds of mail like that!</p>
<p>We were a full pay family. DS going from OR to engineering school in PA. I remember older bro going from OR to Pton, he had a rough time his freshman year. I wasn’t sure how our son would fare the first term or year. He did fine like any good Beaver is a pretty good engineer. The cost for the tuition insurance was such a small portion of what we paid for tuition. Apparently, the risk is fairly small but not negligible. It is insurance and a family must know its risk exposure. </p>
<p>I’d be more inclined to buy private life or individual health insurance for student if we had to do it again. We only used the tuition insurance for one year.</p>
<p>We are DEFINITELY getting tuition insurance. Around November of my sophomore year I developed a digestive disorder out of nowhere. No family history, no symptoms to warn me it was coming, just out of nowhere I had constant stomach flu symptoms and pain and then I was stuck missing classes to see specialists who didn’t work in the afternoons. I missed tons of school, from doctors appointments and from serious illness, and my grades dropped (as I was applying to transfer to umich!!!), and I nearly had to withdraw for emergency surgery DURING FINALS WEEK. Seriously. The day before finals I was not studying, I was chugging barium and getting a scan to check for bowel obstructions to see if I needed to go under the knife instead of to my stats exam the next day. You cannot IMAGINE my terror as I considered not only having to waste an entire year of grueling work (try sitting through a lecture when you vomit every hour or feel like you have hot coal sitting in your stomach), but having to lose all the money I invested in that year only to double my debt to retake my whole semester when I was better. At my school, tuition insurance is $178 a year. It’d be STUPID not to get it. God forbid, your child could get into a car accident or fall down a flight of stairs and that could be the end of their semester. My boyfriend fell down the stairs and broke his hand in July trying to rush to class and now he cannot complete his chem labs, an entire summer semester of tuition and housing wasted. Especially if you have loans to pay back tuition insurance is a MUST. And really, it’s a damn good idea no matter what.</p>
<p>You are paying thousands of dollars for college that you could lose in an instant if there is an accident and your child gets injured or sick. It’s silly not to protect that-- you’ll need that money when they feel better and are ready to re-enroll.</p>
<p>There are several threads on this … You might want to read through those. The bottom line is that TRP is cheap because they don’t make many payouts. There are many reasons for this … refunds by college and constraints on coverage being the principal ones. Find out what your college’s withdrawal and refund policies are, and then read the TRP contract thoroughly.</p>
<p>I’m thinking ours isn’t really cheap, it is about $350 but that is cheap compared to loosing a semester of tuition. We will probably go with it.</p>
<p>To decide, I’d STRONGLY suggest you read carefully what the terms are and WHEN it kicks in. We have been offered it when we were full pay for private school for both our kids & also for college. We have opted NOT to take it for any of those years even tho our kids have chronic health issues. They have NEVER totally dropped all classes & withdrawn, as would be required for the insurance policies we have read to kick in (even when they missed 1/2 the year, as they each did in HS. We didn’t even buy travel insurance when S went on a band trip to Australia because upon reading the terms, it sounded like there would be a huge fight to get them to pay if we want to make a claim.</p>
<p>D did miss a lot of classes her 2nd semester of CC. We did not have tuition insurance & she got several Ws but still did NOT withdraw from school & would not have gotten a refund.</p>
<p>It’s all about what risks you wish to self insure and what risks you prefer to let others assume. READ YOUR POLICY to determine what makes sense for you & your family. Our kids tuition insurance was under $100/semester.</p>
<p>We got the insurance last year because our daughter had been struggling with flood-related intestinal problems all summer and we weren’t sure she was over the problem. This year we are getting it again in case H1N1 hits hard and the school doesn’t close even though we think it should. We’ve spent 18 years saving for college and $350 is peanuts compared to tuition, room and board down the drain.</p>
<p>libartsmom- It’s up to you, of course, but I wouldn’t buy insurance based on the likelyhood of H1N1 flu hitting. And I’m saying this from the standpoint of someone who is still recovering from a bout with said virus. Yes, it was nasty and I have been very ill, but I have a supressed immune system due to drugs taken for my RA AND I didn’t get to the MD early enough to take the Tamiflu or Relenza (sp?). It is not likely to make a normal, healthy teen ill enough to have to withdraw from college-which is how I understand that the insurance kicks in- and I’d doubt that you could get an MD to fill out the paperwork saying that total withdrawal from school was necessary, even if your D did catch it. Given the lawyers who write these policy clauses, there is apt to be a clause in this year’s paperwork, declaring that such an illness was “pre-existing in the population”, which it is, and thus, there may be a difference in coverage. I am sure that your tution would not be refunded if the flu hit the campus, because, even if they did shut down, temporarily(which would not be more than a couple of weeks), everyone would be in the same position, and a school isn’t going to refund tution on a wholesale basis. If it makes you more comfortable, by all means, get it, but I just want others to think twice before using “Swine Flu” as a reason to take out insurance on tuition.</p>
<p>Tuition insurance – waste of money.</p>
<p>I never had to drop out of semester of school for illness.</p>
<p>I would also double-check that the insurance even covers flu & epidemics as the terms of the policy MAY exclude such coverage. KNOW what you are buying and be sure that’s what you mean to buy. Policies are VERY narrowly interpreted and have LOTS of exclusions.</p>
<p>Most folks who get H1N1 recover fine in one or two weeks and I doubt many would require a total withdrawal from school UNLESS they have other severe chronic medical issues. Even if that happens, schools will often work with students and let them get an incomplete & make up the coursework. That’s what happened with our D when she got quite ill in her 2nd semester. She did end up getting two Ws, the rest Is & was able to make up her other courses.</p>
<p>We have gotten it for all our kids in college, and used it last year. This decision may depend on whether you have chronic conditions in your family, or even just personality traits: do you prepare for worst case scenarios, or tend to be optimistic; are you conservative or do you take risks, etc. For us, it saved us from losing quite a bit of money.</p>
<p>The insurance is worth every penny for us. Daughter picks up every bug that is out there and is frequently sick. 1st semester Freshman year she got a bad cold that went into a very bad double ear infection that went to her tonsils, and she was very very sick. Wiped out the whole semester, at a very expensive private school, and not a credit earned to show for it. It happens. All that money for nothing.</p>
<p>Mono hits a lot of kids, and they have to drop classes, or drop out. It is worth the $400! For this daughter, will buy insurance every semester. So, it really depends on the kid. But, we had a neighbor who got into a car accident and also had to stay out the whole semester, so you never know. HIGHLY recommend for Freshman year, at least.</p>
<p>I do not think you can shop it around. I contacted her university and they gave me the name of the company that provided it. I cut it in half, and pay by semester, just in case.</p>
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<p>So what? Using that as an example, one would never buy car, life, dental, homeowner’s, etc. insurance until after the first car accident, death, major dental problem, fire, etc. (Of course, if there’s a mortgage on your house, your mortgage company will require that you have homeowner’s insurance, and many states require that you have car insurance.)</p>
<p>I had to drop out one semester when I had mono, and had to take incompletes another semester when I needed emergency surgery and was out of school for six weeks. Stuff happens, if not to one person, to another, and you just don’t know who will be fortunate enough not to need the insurance.</p>
<p>People have car accidents, get sick, need surgery, and so on, and students are no exception. If one can take the financial hit for a semester’s tuition, yee-haw and don’t buy the insurance! If one would be hard-pressed if a semester’s tuition went for no credits, one would do well to look carefully at tuition insurance and possibly buy it.</p>
<p>We bought it last yr for our D and we are buying this year again for her. Thankfully we did not use it. Sorry, but our dollars are just too prescious not to buy it. Since tuition, room and board are extremely high, we cannot afford to lose it if daughter did end up sick and missing too much class.</p>
<p>I actually got mono fall semester of my sophomore year but thankfully didn’t have to drop out-- then winter semester was when the digestive disorder reared its ugly head. That was one hell of a year! I am young and (was) generally in good health, but anything can happen.</p>
<p>My boyfriend did end up having to drop his summer chem class after falling down the stairs and breaking his hand, he just can’t keep up now. I’ve fallen down the stairs at school so many times, they are constantly wet at the bottom near the doors-- not to mention all the times I’ve slipped on ice outside when I had class before salt could be spread across campus. Unless you’re invincible, any kind of an accident can happen to anybody at any time that could very well trash their semester, regardless of whether or not it’s happened to them before. I guess if your tuition insurance options are rip offs then that might be a reason not to get it, or if you and your children can afford to waste an entire semester. Mine is $178 for the year and covers something like 85% of all my tuition and room and board, so I can pay back most of my loans and not end up in crippling debt just because of something stupid like a patch of ice on the sidewalk.</p>
<p>Does every school offer tuition insurance?? if not, what is the name of the company you are using? thanks!</p>
<p>I don’t know if every school offers it. This is the website for the program that my school told us about:</p>
<p>[College</a> Tuition Refund - Home Page](<a href=“Tuition Protection | Dewar Tuition Refund Plan”>http://www.collegerefund.com/)</p>
<p>And this is the info from the school:</p>
<p>[Tuition</a> Refund Plan | UM University Health Service](<a href=“http://www.uhs.umich.edu/tri]Tuition”>http://www.uhs.umich.edu/tri)</p>
<p>Withdrawal on the basis of a psychological or emotional complaint is a bit stickier because at least in my case I’d have had to have been confined to a hospital for two consecutive days and I don’t have very good health insurance so if I’d been confined to a hospital for two days my family would probably be bankrupted. But for physical illness and injury all that is required is documentation from a doctor.</p>
<p>I am a big believer in insurance (although I have finally stopped buying extended warranties on most electronics) and thus buy the tuition insurance. My D is OOS at a public university and we pay the full tuition burden. Since there have been a few touch and go moments over the past two years, I am glad we have had the insurance. Of course, if she had to leave school we would still be stuck with her expensive apartment lease but at least the tuition wouldn’t be down the drain. We have also insured her personal property at a pretty high level.</p>