I think most students in America have loans. For me, and everyone I knew, there was a credit balance after the school got paid and that money was put into your bank account.

Don't forget you have to buy books, etc., and they cost "a couple of hundred dollars" too.

When I was an undergraduate I was definitely on a knife's edge, but I also often had cash in the bank because I got a big cash infusion annually. I just had to live off a very strict budget at that time to make sure the money would last.

I wouldn't have wanted to rely on this service when I was a student, especially at that cost, but in a pinch I could see situations where it would make sense.

I myself was never given access to any funds or credit from student loans.

It would have been nice if I did though.

If you're able to scrape together the funds for another semester, you can probably scrape together a couple hundred bucks to avoid paying for that extra semester.

People going to university like to talk about how poor they are, but they're obviously not "can't manage a couple hundred bucks for college" poor. I've known a lot of constantly-bordering-on-homeless people, and they're usually lucky to even manage community college. UW is $13k a year just for tuition.