Student sponsorship agreement

If you have offered a student a job to start when they have graduated and you want to give them sponsorship towards their tuition fees, use our student sponsorship agreement to protect your position if they drop out of the course or decide not to start your job. But do note it must be signed before you pay over any sponsorship monies.

Financial assistance

With the cost of university tuition fees spiralling, many students will be looking to future employers to assist them financially by agreeing to pay for part of their tuition fees. Of course, it’s most likely you’ll agree to do this if the student has agreed to come and work for you after they’ve graduated. If this is the case, use our Student Sponsorship Agreement. It sets out details of the student’s course subject, qualification to be attained and place of study and provides that, in return for the student having accepted a job with you, you wish to sponsor them by paying part of their course tuition fees. It then goes on to set out how much you’re willing to pay and provides for you to pay the fees directly to the relevant university on receipt of an invoice from that institution.

Repayment provisions

The main substance of our agreement is then in the repayment provisions. These provide that the student agrees to reimburse you the cost of the tuition fees you’ve paid if they withdraw from the course, are thrown off the course, fail to commence employment under the terms of your job offer or commence employment but then resign within one/two years. In the latter case, the tie-in is on a sliding scale so that the longer the student remains employed by you, the less they will have to pay back to you if they then leave your employment. A one-year tie-in should normally be reasonable in these circumstances, but if you’ve funded the student’s full three-year degree course, then a two-year tie-in is probably acceptable. It’s important that the contractual provision for repayment of the fees does not act as an extravagant penalty on the student out of all proportion to your loss, so don’t ask them to pay back more than you paid out. That’s why there’s a sliding scale once they’ve started employment with you, as you will be getting some benefit for each month they work for you. Finally, our agreement provides that if the student has already started work for you, you can deduct any tuition fees due to be repaid from their wages and if their final salary isn’t sufficient to cover it, the student agrees to repay the balance to you within three calendar months of their employment termination. However, if the student hasn’t yet started work for you, we’ve provided that they agree to repay the fees within a twelve-month period on such terms as you may agree with them. Remember here that if the student doesn’t have a job or savings, this will affect their ability to repay. Ultimately, you can enforce the agreement through the civil courts if needs be.