to move to Scotland for the free University places?

[weewifey40]

I love Scotland. It's a beautiful country. Bit cold, but you can't have it all!
However, we have 3 dc's.
The way things are now, it will cost them all about 30k in student debt each to get a degree. So 90k for the three of them.
Neither of our parents helped us with the cost of our degrees and it made life very tricky in our younger days.
We'd love to help our dc's towards the cost of uni.
The eldest two are very academic and already talking about what they want to do at Uni, so I think it's pretty safe to assume they're going down that route.
We could get a bigger house for the same money up there. Would want to be about half an hour or so from Edinburgh.
Has anyone else thought of doing this?
Any thoughts?
It also occurs to me that we could move and then Scotland decides to introduce fees!

[MissAnnersley]

Do you have jobs lined up? Would your children want to move? Have you looked at any schools?

[Dandy902]

DH has been offered a job in Scotland totally out of the blue after we had just decided to settle here down in the south after a few years of moving around chasing careers etc.

The free uni is one of many factors swinging our decision (2 teen dc) although we have lived there before and know we love it and are also very aware the free uni may go before our DC reach it. We are seriously thinking we will go back.

[AMumInScotland]

I think you need to be resident here for a little while first, but that would depend how old your DC are.

And they might stop paying fees in the meantime, or we get independence and English students have to be treated the same as other EU ones.

So it would be a gamble.

But it's nice up here anyway

[VenusRising]

Hanve you any irish ancestry? Why don't you send your kids to Ireland?
The universities are top class, and easy to get into with good a levels- better choice of courses: more multi disciplinary also.

If you decide to move from England, I wouldn't sell up.
Rent in Edinburgh and rent out your house in England. Think about it for the long term: you probably won't want to live your entire life in Scotland, and will need a base in the south for yourselves and your kids, if you and they want to work in England.

[VenusRising]

Sorry meant to say, Irish unis are free to Irish - just a thousand euros capitation fee pa.

Unis in Germany are also about a grand per year.

[WilsonFrickett]

Why would anyone not want to live their entire life in Scotland? Tis vair nice. Many, many people have no desire to live in the South of England you know Venus.

OP - if there are other factors driving your move then yes, why not? But as AMum says, it's doubtful free tuition will last for ever, so I wouldn't move soley based on that.

[Floggingmolly]

Irish universities are most certainly not free to the Irish, Venus, where did you hear that? The costs are roughly the same as the U.K., but payable upfront, instead of as and when you actually earn enough to start paying the loan back.

[weewifey40]

I didn't realise there was a rule that you had to be living there for 3 years before qualifying for the free places!

[Tailtwister]

I wouldn't move solely for that reason OP. The current situation of no tuition fees is unsustainable imo. Around Edinburgh is nice, but not particularly cheap. Schools are always worth looking at too, remembering that the system is different too.

[SofaKing]

I'd go for it. Your DC could defer a year and work once they had secured their place if they are due to start in less than 3 years.

Do be aware salaries up here are a lot less- DH is from the SE of England, we live outside Glasgow and he earns 45k. If we lived where he came from it would be at least 3 times that, but Euphemia is correct about housing in Edinburgh area. My nephew is going to uni there and the housing costs are very high in comparison to where we are.

So in summary, swings and roundabouts

[honeytea]

If you move to Sweden and your kids get Swedish citizenship they can go to English (or any university in the world) for free.

[scottishmummy]

Not as straight forward as move scotland,get free uni.residency rules apply
Bigger house?depends if you relocate from pricy SE. But Edinburgh good locations pricy
Outskirts Edinburgh affordable though

[idiot55]

and this is precisly why scottish people cannot afford to buy houses in the area they have lived all their lives becasue of this very issue , oh nad the free care for elderly.

pah!

[mrsjay]

You have to be "Scots-domiciled" to qualify for free university tuition i.e. resident for at least three years.

that

Op if you want to then do it depdns where you want to live though as others have pointed out the nice areas are quite pricey but I suppose it depends where you live now, DD goes to a UHI university located in a college so you could look into that as well and not the main universities

[mrsjay]

why wouldn't they want to spend their entire lives in Scotland venus its a lovely place to live the OP might like it much better than england, (goes all braveheart )

[mrsjay]

If you want to be an Hour away from Edinburgh you could live anywhere in the central belt

[amillionyears]

VenusRising "The universities are top class"
Last time I looked they were middle ranking in the league tables.

[LaurieFairyCake]

There are far fewer uni's, all in the top 40. St Andrews no6.

[scottishmummy]

Well having studied at both scottish and English unis,I'd say Scottish uni were considerably better

[mrsjay]

oooo euphemia they are lovely not keen on the second 1 though

[Foggles]

I love that first house Euphemia but I would have to buy a lot more furniture to fill it.