Other well-known companies, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Staples, Aetna, and Penguin Random House, have also added student-loan payments to their list of employee perks. About 4 percent of companies said they offered the repayment as a benefit last year, and the figure rises to 8 percent for companies with 40,000 employees or more. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has said the benefit could quickly become more popular, given how many people have student loans—more than 44 million in the United States—and how worried they are about them. “A lot of people just want to get rid of it, because it’s such an emotional burden that they’re carrying from the past,” Nigam says. “They tell us, ‘I would love to get rid of my student loans before I get married or move on to the next stage of life,’ as opposed to thinking about retirement.”

In 2015, graduates who took out student loans finished with an average of $34,000 in debt, compared with $20,000 a decade earlier. In March, Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, said swelling levels of student debt could hold back economic growth. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have found that graduates with student debt are less likely to own a home in their early 30s than those who completed their education without taking on as much or any debt.

The Obama Administration, through enforcement actions and establishing a student-loan ombudsman in the CFPB to monitor complaints, has tried to make it easier for borrowers to pay back their loans. In January 2017, at the end of the Obama Administration, the CFPB sued Navient, the largest U.S. student-loan collector. But the Trump Administration seems to be backing off some of the earlier efforts. The CFPB has continued the Navient lawsuit and has fined other servicers for illegal practices; it also still has a student-loan ombudsman. But on May 9, Mick Mulvaney, the interim director, said its student-loan division will be folded into a broader consumer-information unit. The bureau also removed from its long-term agenda the goal of improving student-loan collection. In April, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos withdrew policy memos issued by the Obama Administration that prioritized awarding contracts to student-loan servicers who dealt fairly with borrowers.

In these challenges, financial-services companies sense an opportunity. Both large businesses such as Fidelity and smaller financial-technology start-ups are developing platforms for employers to help workers repay their loans. The benefit is pitched as a tool to recruit and retain young workers, especially for high-demand jobs, such as nursing, in a tight labor market. Memorial Hermann Health System, which owns 15 hospitals in the Houston area, started offering student-loan repayment in 2015 to attract employees with one to three years of experience. The health system makes 270 loan payments each quarter, and the retention rate of nurses who have signed up is 95 percent, compared to the average retention rate for nurses, which is 88 percent, says Lori Knowles, the chief human resources officer. “We believe in growing and developing our employees, and this is one of the things we can point to and show that we mean it,” she says.