Back-to-School Insurance Guide 2025: Health, Renters, Auto & More
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For students heading off to college, there are insurance implications for many aspects of their back-to-school preparation. Students need to contend with health insurance, renters insurance, automotive insurance, and depending on their individual situations, they may potentially need to consider tuition insurance, life insurance, travel insurance, and even moving insurance.
We’ll break down these back-to-school options down one at a time here.
College Student Health
One of the first and biggest areas families need to think about when it comes to insuring their college students is their health. That’s true even if the family has perfectly fine health insurance back home.
If the student is going to school in the same metro area as the family, then staying on that family health plan is probably the best option. But that doesn’t mean they get to stop thinking about health insurance. That is because most universities require their students to carry sufficient insurance in order to enroll, and to make sure everyone is properly insured, those schools often automatically enroll every student in an insurance policy that partners with the school – whether they have a policy already or not.
These school-partnered plans are typically good, and often comparatively affordable plans. They cover doctors, emergencies, and prescriptions. But if the student already has health insurance, it can be redundant. If that’s the case, the student needs to show the school their proof of insurance, so the school-partnered plan is waived. If they don’t do that in the first week or so of school, the school-provided plan can be automatically charged to the students’ tuition bill. If the student shows proof of adequate insurance before that deadline, the school will waive that extra line item, which is typically several thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, if the student is going to school in an area far from home, the family’s existing plan may not actually be appropriate. That is because health insurance plans separate their providers into in-network and out-of-network providers. Access to the network also applies to pharmacies.
For most health plans, the in-network providers, which cost substantially less to use, are located geographically close to the policyholder’s home – typically the parents’ home city.
So, if the student is going out of state, or even to the other side of a big state, their parents’ policy may not be the best option, with the in-network providers likely being hundreds of miles away from their student.
If that is the case, then the school-partnered health insurance plan is a great place to start looking for other options, but it isn’t the only place.
Sometimes the parents can contact their insurance company and see if they can purchase an extended network, meaning the providers close to their child’s school may become in-network. Paying for an expanded network can sometimes be less expensive than adding an additional policy for the child.
Another option is to look at is an Affordable Care Act Marketplace plan. This is especially attractive if the parents are also on a Marketplace plan themselves. That is because even though they would have to purchase a new policy for the child, the way the federal government calculates policy subsidies, the amount the parents are paying is worked into the same equation as the child, so the students’ policy may not cost a whole lot more after the premium subsidies are figured in.
One key to keep in mind is that even though health insurance can typically only be purchased during open enrollment, moving to a new ZIP code is considered a qualifying life event, meaning that all policies will allow changes after a move away to school – as long as they are made within a tight window of the move.
Student Auto Insurance
If the student is a driver, auto insurance also needs to be top of mind.
Much like health insurance, the first option families need to consider is sticking with the parents’ plan. Piggybacking off a parent’s policy is almost always less expensive than having a teenager get their own policy.
If the student is going to school in town, not much needs to change, other than ensuring the agent applies a good-student discount.
If the student is moving out of town, letting the agent know where the vehicle will be is key.
If the student brings the vehicle to school, their rate could go up – or down, especially if the move is from a high-cost metro area to a low-cost rural school or vice versa.
It’s important to not skip letting the agent know about the move, though, or else there might be consequences or even refused coverage if there is an accident and the insurance company learns the vehicle was not being kept in the place that they rated it.
If the student opts to leave the vehicle at home while they go off to school, most insurance companies will offer a substantial discount because the vehicle will likely be just sitting in the driveway for most of the year. And if that is the case, families might also opt for a pay per mile vehicle telematics device for cheaper insurance rates, which they can plug into the parked vehicle in exchange for a much lower rate once the insurance company sees how seldom the vehicle is being driven.
Student Renters Coverage
Even though students aren’t starting out life with a house full of high-end possessions, getting renters insurance is more important than it might first appear.
First, even though they don’t typically have high-end art and jewels in their dorms, students do generally come to school with a valuable phone and laptop, not to mention a closet full of clothes, which would cost many thousands of dollars to replace.
If the student is moving into a dorm room, then their parents’ homeowners insurance would generally offer them some protection. However, a parents’ homeowners policy isn’t always the ideal option to protect a college student, for a number of reasons. First, the parents’ deductible would apply to any claim. And if the parents live in an area with costly homeowners insurance and have opted for a high deductible to keep policy premiums down, there might not be much coverage left if a $1,000 laptop were to get stolen. Second, if a student were to make a claim, that would be a hit against the parents’ claims history, which might hurt them when it comes time to renew.
And the parents’ homeowners policies will never cover their child’s possessions if they live in an off-campus apartment.
For those reasons, students often opt for a renters policy instead.
Since they are not covering a primary residence, premiums for a renters policy are typically very low – just a few hundred dollars a year in general. They also have correspondingly low deductibles, meaning a $800 phone could be mostly covered if it was inadvertently tossed off a fourth-floor balcony.
Families can shop renters policies from any agent who sells homeowners plans. They can also work with the company that partners with the university, which will often offer very competitive rates.
In addition to covering the students’ property, renters insurance has a few other nice add-ons. For one, it generally carries a liability portion, which would kick in if the student were to accidentally cause damage to someone else’s property – say they were playing hall sports and inadvertently knocked a drinking fountain off the wall, flooding the floor.
Renters policies also typically protect against defamation. So, if the student were to get into a social media fight with someone and take it a bit too far and falsely damage their reputation, the renters policy would potentially hire an attorney to defend the defamation suit and could help pay any judgement or settlement that might come from that.
Renters policies also typically include a medical provision, which would help pay for the medical bills of any guests in the home who are accidentally harmed, such asif a guest were to fall down the student’s stairs. The medical provision could cover the several-hundred-dollar bill from urgent care.
In the case of a mandatory evacuation, or if the student’s apartment were to get damaged, renters policies also cover loss-of-use. So, if the student had to stay in a hotel briefly, the policy would pay for those added living expenses.
Two things renters insurance do NOT cover is floods and earthquakes. If the student has a basement apartment in an earthquake zone, those separate policies would be worth buying in addition to the renters policy.
Student Life
In general, life insurance is meant to replace someone’s income if they were to die suddenly while someone else is relying on them. This makes life insurance policies ideal for young families. It also means that if the student is a young parent, or if they are a caregiver for someone else, a term life policy would be a good way to make sure those people were protected if something were to happen to the student.
There is also a niche situation where life insurance might make sense for a student, even if they are not a parent or caregiver: if the student’s parents are helping them launch their lives in the form of a loan that they expect to be paid back.
The parents might be taking out a private student loan for tuition or even cashing out retirement savings to help pay tuition or buy a first house or to help the student launch a business after graduation, with the expectation of getting paid back later. In this case, if the student were to die an untimely death, the parents would never get paid back. An inexpensive term policy naming the parents as a beneficiary makes sense here.
And since the students, by the nature of being young adults, tend to be in good health, their term policies would be very inexpensive compared with someone in their 50s trying to secure similar coverage.
Tuition Insurance
Families are investing thousands of dollars each semester for their children’s education. If something where to happen that kept the student from finishing the semester, there aren’t a lot of options to recover that investment.
If the family were to see these roadblocks coming soon enough, they could have the student withdraw from the university for a full refund. Unfortunately, the window to do this is vanishingly small. Often this must be done within the first week or two of class. After that, the only other option is to withdraw midway through the semester, where they may only be entitled to a pro-rated refund. And not all schools even offer refunds at this point.
So, unless the family were to luck out and be able to withdraw quickly, they would lose the entire semester’s tuition payment.
This is where tuition insurance comes in.
Tuition insurance protects families if their student were to get sick during the semester, or if they were hurt in an accident and couldn’t finish the semester. Tuition insurance often also kicks in if the tuition payer were to die or lose their job.
Tuition insurance covers sudden, unexpected illness that would keep the student from continuing to study. It also covers chronic issues that get worse and make studies impossible.
Tuition insurance is often offered as an option by the school, which partners with a private provider who writes the coverage. Some specialty insurers also sell these policies directly to families.
Tuition insurance typically gives a full refund for tuition no matter how far into the semester the crisis happens, and it also often covers the costs for room and board and fees.
Many policies also have add-on services, such as travel and transportation assistance in the case of a covered event, and many offer a service to help get the student’s vehicle home if they were to fly home unexpectedly for a covered reason.
Student Travel
Many epic trips were born from a conversation in the quad — whether that is a spring break blowout or a European backpacking adventure.
In some cases, these trips would benefit from travel insurance. In other cases, students might do better taking on the risk themselves.
Travel insurance reimburses travelers for non-refundable up-front costs that were lost because the trip was called off for a covered reason. This could be because the travelers fell ill, or because a wildfire swept through the town they were about to visit.
But that isn’t all a travel policy protects students from.
Travel policies also protect their luggage. So, if their checked bag is lost, the travel insurance would kick in and reimburse them for their lost clothing.
If the trip were delayed for a covered reason, the travel policy may step in and help with housing costs and food and then help re-book the trip to get it back on schedule.
But one of the biggest reasons students might consider travel insurance is if their adventure takes them out of their home health insurance coverage network.
If the student were to travel to Europe and then fall ill, the travel insurance policy would help find and pay for a doctor or emergency room, even in places where their home health insurance may not reach.
All that said, if the trip is less exotic, travel insurance may be overkill. For example, if the spring break trip is just a quick road trip and hotel stay in Florida, there isn’t much in the way of non-refundable up-front costs a travel policy might pay for.
And if it is just a flight home, the airline will typically have enough of a refund policy to keep the student protected.
Moving In
When it comes to moving into the dorm or the apartment, it is important to know that a homeowners or renters policy likely won’t help if all their worldly possessions are ruined. That is because these policies are meant to kick in if a covered event were to happen to the home. But in the case of a moving van – the possessions are not in the covered property.
Some policies protect against theft away from home. So, if the van were to be stollen, it could be covered.
But if reckless movers were to smash a television, another type of coverage would have to kick in.
When it comes to moving, there are generally three types of protection: Released Value Protection, Full Value Protection, and Third Party Insurance. These first two sound similar, but they are very different. Most moving companies automatically offer released value protection as an included cost of the move, but it comes with a big catch. Its protection is based on the weight of the object, not the value of the object. So, if a 10-pound flat screen TV were broken, released value protection would only reimburse $6 – nowhere near enough to replace the item.
Full Value Protection is also offered by the movers, but it is a paid upgrade. It is more generous, but its coverage is typically limited to $100 a pound for each item’s value.
Third party insurance protection is a separate policy that the customer has to buy. The moving companies often offer these policies as well, but they are written by third party insurers and tend to be the most generous when it comes to covering damaged items but are also the costliest.
K-12 Insurance for Your Kids
College students aren’t the only ones who need to be thinking of health insurance.
When pupils are heading back to their K-12 classrooms, there are a few places where parents need to make sure their insurance is secure.
First, if the parents don’t have a health insurance plan that covers the child, they might look into the Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is a federally funded program run by each state to ensure that middle- and low-income children are covered with adequate health insurance. And making sure they have coverage is essential, especially if that child is the kind who is likely to fall from the monkey bars and break an arm, or even just come home with a case of the class sniffles.
One major advantage of the CHIP program is that it has rolling open enrollment, meaning families can sign up at any point of the year, as long as they qualify.
Health insurance is also important for the back-to-school vaccines.
All Affordable Care Act compliant health insurance plans, including CHIP and Medicaid, cover required vaccines at no cost to the patient.
And if the child is looking to get involved in sports, parents can use the child’s annual well-child visit – which is covered at no cost to the family – to have the doctor fill out the physical forms.
If the family forgets to get the physical at the annual visit, they might have to schedule a separate visit, along with a separate co-pay to get those physical forms filled out. And most schools require students to have a new physical for every year they participate in sports.
Dorm residents are often covered partially by a parent’s homeowners policy for personal property, but limits and deductibles apply and liability may not be included. A low-cost student renters policy can close those gaps and cover off-campus housing.
Staying on a parent’s policy is usually cheaper if the student lives at home part-time and drives a family car. If the student owns the vehicle or lives full-time out of state, a separate policy may be required by the insurer.
Tuition insurance can reimburse nonrefundable tuition and fees if a student withdraws for covered reasons like serious illness or injury. Policies vary and often exclude academic or disciplinary withdrawals.
Yes. Travel insurance can bundle trip cancellation, interruption, medical, and evacuation coverage for study abroad. Check school requirements and any overlap with your health plan.
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Michael Giusti is a senior insurance analyst, business journalist, and university professor with over 20 years of experience. He serves as department chair at Loyola University New Orleans and contributes to Insurance Thought Leadership, U.S. News, and other leading financial outlets.
