Everyone knows that college is expensive. Yet very few people know that the cost of college can be insured.

The high cost of college has been building for decades. Withering subsidies at the state level are causing public universities to raise the sticker prices they charge students. Private colleges are also charging more, as their endowment funds still reel from the 2008 financial meltdown and continuing market uncertainty.

Despite the high cost, students and their parents understand in their gut how important a college education is to future success. Somehow they find a way, year after year, to pull together the financial resources to make the college investment. This year, it's true more than ever. According to the U.S. Department of Education, a record 70.1% of 2009 high school graduates entered a post-secondary institution last fall.

But, as with any investment, something can go amiss. In the case of the college investment, an ongoing risk is the unexpected event of a medical withdrawal.

Exact numbers on medical withdrawals from college are difficult to obtain. But clearly they do occur. A 2009 Student Monitor study found that 27% of students either themselves experienced or had a close friend who experienced a mid-semester withdrawal from college due to student medical condition or a death in their immediate family.

What happens when an unexpected force meets an immovable object? In physics, it's a collision and, in the case of college tuition, it's the creation of financial risks and vulnerabilities for students and their parents.

The immovable objects in this case are the understandably strict refund policies put in place by colleges and universities. The high-stakes drama of college admissions at many schools leads their "seats" for students to be extremely valuable. So when one of those seats suddenly becomes empty, due to an unexpected medical withdrawal, the vast majority of colleges are reluctant to give the money already spent, or committed to, back to the student and his or her tuition-paying parent. And when federal financial aid is involved, loans or grants, the refund policies of schools are often guided by strict government guidelines.

With the cost of attendance for the average in-state student at a public university more than $15,000, and the average annual cost for a private school student nearly $36,000, the loss of even a semester's worth of college investment can leave a devastating mark on a family's finances, without any result to show for it, other than instructions to retake classes the following semester.