Higher Education Insurance

A Student Health Insurance Program (SHIP) is health insurance offered to enrolled students — a program entirely separate from employee health benefits, governed by different ACA regulatory requirements and serving a population whose health coverage status, utilization patterns and plan expectations are fundamentally different from a benefits-eligible workforce.

SHIP design involves choices that affect both the student experience and the institution’s financial exposure: the annual plan maximum, the network structure for on-campus student health center integration, the waiver rate assumptions that affect plan pricing and the carrier relationships that determine claims administration quality for a student population with specific behavioral health, preventive care and short-term coverage needs. Institutions that treat SHIP as a renewal-year transaction rather than an annual advisory relationship carry design risks that a dedicated SHIP advisor identifies in advance.

Directors and officers (D&O) insurance with an educators legal liability (ELL) endorsement is the governance foundation of every college and university insurance program, but the standard form written before the antitrust litigation, before Title IX regulatory volatility intensified and before NIL created a new institutional liability category may not specifically contemplate the governance risk environment that university boards operate in today. HUB’s Professional & Executive Risk (ProEx) team connects current governance liability developments to specific policy changes through dedicated D&O and ELL advisory.

Employment practices liability (EPL) with third-party liability (TPL) coverage addresses both employment-related claims from faculty and staff and student civil rights claims under Title IX, Section 504/ADA and the post-2025 disability discrimination standard changes. Title IX compliance advisory — investigation protocol development, coordinator training and process documentation — reduces the frequency and severity of Title IX claims. NIL liability program design addresses institutional exposure from endorsement facilitation, NIL collective administration and Title IX equity obligations.

The residential campus creates a liability environment unlike anything else in the education sector and requires a campus safety insurance program unlike anything available to K-12 institutions.

Sexual misconduct liability coverage for adult-to-adult and student-to-student claims in a residential campus environment is distinct from the abuse and molestation liability that K-12 and charter schools need; the coverage structure, underwriting criteria and risk management protocols differ materially. Active shooter and targeted violence coverage, civil unrest and event cancellation coverage for major campus events and professional liability for student health center mental health services each address specific liability scenarios that campus safety planning must anticipate.

Campus property programs must reflect the diversity of what a college or university owns: historic academic buildings with replacement costs that reflect specialized construction, modern science and engineering facilities with equipment-intensive laboratory environments, residential housing complexes with habitational insurance requirements, athletic venues and field houses and deferred maintenance backlogs that affect both the risk profile and the insurance-to-value calculation of every structure on the portfolio. Property programs written in lower construction cost environments with older replacement value schedules carry insurance-to-value gaps that a hard property market makes consequential.

Research facilities require property coverage specifically designed for their contents: laboratory equipment, controlled specimens, research-in-progress, grant-funded equipment and data stored on laboratory systems. The operational technology (OT) environments of research universities — laboratory control systems, animal research facility monitoring, high-energy physics installations — create cyber exposure that standard IT-focused cyber policies may not specifically address. Equipment breakdown coverage for HVAC, laboratory climate control and research computing infrastructure addresses equipment-dependent research facility risks.

Collegiate athletic departments carry a distinct institutional risk profile: participant injury liability for student athletes in contact sports, coach employment practices liability, event liability for competitions and athletic facilities and the NIL institutional exposure that has emerged since NCAA rule changes in 2021. An institution facilitating an endorsement arrangement that creates a Title IX equity disparity between male and female athletes is creating D&O and EPL exposure in a coverage area where market responses are still developing.

HUB's Entertainment and Sports practice brings the collegiate athletics expertise and NIL advisory capability that a standard commercial lines team cannot offer. State high school athletics associations with oversight responsibilities that extend to member institutions are also served through this capability.

Faculty and senior research staff retention requires benefits competitive with peer institutions and with the industrial research employers who recruit academic talent. 403(b) plan design and administration — including fiduciary liability management for the plan’s investment menu and employer contribution structure — is a primary financial wellbeing tool for faculty. HUB’s Retirement Private Wealth practice provides 403(b) advisory, fiduciary liability coverage and financial education programs for faculty and staff.

The SHIP program and the employee benefits program together serve the institution’s full community — students and employees — under two distinct coverage structures with different regulatory requirements, different plan design logic and different advisory relationships. HUB treats SHIP as distinct from employee benefits as it is unique within the higher education market.

International study-abroad programs, exchange programs, research expeditions and athletic travel create duty-of-care obligations that extend well beyond the campus boundary and into geographies where political instability, natural disasters, targeted kidnapping and medical emergencies produce losses that standard general liability and commercial auto programs do not address. A student or faculty member kidnapped during a study-abroad program in a higher-risk country requires professional crisis response, negotiation support and ransom funding that only a dedicated kidnap and ransom (K&R) program provides.

HUB’s Complex Risk practice provides the K&R and travel risk management advisory that higher education institutions with active international programs need. The travel risk conversation for a large research university with faculty conducting fieldwork in multiple continents requires a different program structure than the student group travel insurance that covers a semester-abroad cohort, and HUB’s Complex Risk capability addresses both.