Dive Brief:

• Employers such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, the consulting and accounting firm, and Natixis, an investment firm, are among companies now offering to help pay off college debt, according to Bloomberg.
• The benefit is catching on as a way to attract and retain talent, particulary hires coming right out of school.
• Still relatively rare (a SHRM survey found just 3% of more than 450 surveyed companies offer a student loan repayment benefit), some predict the trend will continue to grow and may even become fairly common, Bloomberg reports.

Dive Insight:

"Those numbers are understated because there is a lot of pent-up demand for this stuff," Bruce Elliott, SHRM's manager of compensation and benefits, told Bloomberg. "I do think it's the beginning of a trend."

Companies who need lots of college grads are the logical users of a college debt relief program, Bloomberg reports. Apart from repayments, the article says some employers offer refinancing at lower interest rates.

Tim DeMello, founder and chief executive at Gradifi, a solution employers can use to contribute to employee student loan payments, says he's "seeing that it always comes down to meaningful contribution." Gradifi has signed up about 100 employers, Bloomberg reports, and will begin making payments at the beginning of 2016. In the article, Elliot predicts that student loan debt repayment of some type will become as common as health benefits — but how true that may be has yet to be seen.