Uni costs - student/parent paying

It’s also a consideration which degree it is.

Any medical degree you can’t get a job, even part time as you have to do several placement periods. These include shifts, ie weekend & nights. Nobody will employ you & allow you to only be available during ‘term’ time & then not available for 10/15 weeks.

On top of these 12hr shifts, an hour drive each way, then there’s also assignments etc on top. So working on the days off is not practical either.

I am surprised that so many parents shore their kids up like this. A loan and a job should be the 18 year old's responsibility. My friend has a son at med school who has flown through like this and all of mu generation did. Parents seem to be terrified of the 'debt' their children will rack up. Do they not realise that the repayments don't kick in until they can be well afforded ?

I think my mother went in about 1958, and her combination of grant and scholarship was also meant to be topped up by her parents. I believe her father paid her first term's accommodation and considered that enough - which left her almost nothing for transport and textbooks. (she dropped out after 2 years - couldn't get a part-time or holiday job without her father signing the paperwork, while she was under 21; but years later she was able to transfer credits to eventually complete her BSc in a different subject)

I feel that is not my children’s fault that our income of £65k means they are only eligible for the minimum loan so I plan to top them up. We go without in other ways in order to be able to do that. Ds will end up with approx £65 per week to live on after halls fees. He will need to work if he wants more.

I’m not sure of the system in Scotland and Ireland work but I know in Wales the amount a young person gets does not depend on their parent’s income, just whether it’s a grant or loan.

With our current income DD is unlikely to qualify for anything except minimum loans so I am saving money every month to top her up if she decides uni is what she wants. She may not and everything may change as we have 10 yrs till she's 18 but I want to make sure that I have the money to cover what she needs if she needs it.

Not a chance I will be able to afford to pay the difference for my DD. I will of course support her in any which way I can but I just don't have that disposable income and the way things are I can't see that changing in the next few years. I had savings for time but divorce changed all that.

@MarysMonologue no, the calculation of how much you're supposed to pay is the same regardless of how many children are going at the same time.

@MarysMonologue - oddly DS2 who is just finishing is only paying marginally more than your £180 a month from ten years ago. And planning to do a Masters will be staying in same house and paying around that (its just over £200/mnth in reality) for next year. A house which hardly fits the student house profile either. That has been quite exceptional though - he was paying just over £400 in his second year in an ok(ish) house.. In contrast DS3 has been paying £135/wk for very plush 1st year halls (and that is a near bargain price for what was on offer) and £100 /wk for his 2nd year beach front house.

When I say the DCs are paying I of course mean DH and I are paying. We've got off pretty lightly for all three of ours so far. Fingers crossed for DS3's third year accommodation, hopefully he'll be on the beach for two years.

Most unis do seem to offer a range of hall prices; but demand seems to be for the better equipped end of the market. Back a looooong time ago my first year halls were £330 a term fully catered, and just the 17 of us sharing one shower, two baths and two loos!

I wasn't saying you should know OP, apologies if it came across like that, just that your earlier posts seemed to suggest you get the loan (from the government) and the choice is to work part time OR get parental support. I was just trying to say it's not that black & white with how expensive uni is nowadays.

I agree that it's not a necessity to save for uni, but makes life a he'll of a lot easier. We have twins, both looking to go so we're supposed to contribute £10k next year. If that was just out of income, rather than have some savings to fall back on, we couldn't do it.

not convinced 4% is insanely rare, but it certainly is a very small proportion.

OP do you know how the figures work? The maintenance loan (in very general terms) is about 10k. If you have a household income above £60k, then your child will only get £5k of that loan from the government. The other half of the loan is supposed to come from the parents. It's not parents choosing to pay that, it's the government telling them they should.

We're in the process of visiting open days now and the halls of residence are really expensive (last week we visited one, not London, and the cheapest were £7.5k and honestly they weren't that great). If parents don't contribute, that's £2.5k to make up to start with, even before food / books / phone etc. Unless as a pp says, the student stays as home & goes to local uni (and it's not possible for some courses, and obviously a different experience not living away) the amount of part time / summer work you'd have to do to support yourself (without any parental support) would be massive. Not impossible but a real burden, particularly if you're looking at a heavy course.

My advice would be to start saving now - even if it's a small amount, by the time your child is looking at uni it will be a good start.

Well my old uni now suggests you need around £10k a year for living. My Kids will get the minimum living loan as our income is over the £65k threshold. That's around £4.5k I think. So £5.5k to find - and my old uni is one of the cheapest to live at.

Plus you are not allowed to work during term time - at my old uni at least.

So really my kids will be working n the long vac but I doubt they'll be able to save £5.5k from that.

So yes we will need to assist them.

That's a shame @toooldtocarewhoknows , moving away from home is such a big part of the rite of passage of going to university, and your children will have had to compromise on their degree courses too, if they only have one university to choose from. l am glad that one of them has been able to go to a different city. I've always said to mine that fair doesn't always mean equal, so if one of them needed to go to a more expensive place to get on the best course for them, then we would contribute more. But we are lucky to be able to.

Did you know that any pension income is disregarded when they work out maintenance loans? Tell them it's pension not earned income on the forms.

Its what we can do for each child as we have to do the same for all four.

But we have offered each child full accommodation and living costs if they stay at home and travel in. This saves them £8k a year.

We live near a decent university so they have options.

If they decide to study further away they need to figure out a way to bridge the gap between what we can give them and what they need in rent.

I always pay for food for each of them.

@toooldtocarewhoknows are you only paying a ¼ to each child because it's all you can afford, or out of principle? Seems a bit mean if it's the latter.

In the 1990s I didn't receive any maintenance grant (or loan) and my parents paid an amount equal to the maximum grant as was expected and I think pretty normal. I was at Oxford and not allowed to work in term time, only in holidays.

Today my daughter gets minimum loan and again we make it up to the maximum level (and again officially she can't work during term). For my son I suspect we may need to give a bit more as costs are higher at his potential Uni.

We don't pay any fees, and I think that is quite rare.

So in terms of parental contribution, it is actually less proportionately as they have the loans too.

My parents had to contribute back in the 1980s as I was on the minimum grant (about £200/year). Students in those days never had term time jobs - I didn't know a single person who did (we had holiday jobs). We marvelled at students the US who expected to have jobs.

Ours had minimum maintenance loans.

We generally paid for accommodation, and mobile phones (because they had ongoing contracts). Their loans paid for their living expenses.

My mum and dad helped me out when I went to university and I got a (very small) grant. I’m heading toward 50 so this is not new.

Both my dses will take full loans but maintenance loan is the minimum due to our income.

DS1 has a very intensive program at university and couldn’t work. He also has very cheap accommodation and lives cheaply so it’s not too bad. We give him £100 a week in term time, nothing in the holidays so it balances out.

DS2’s accommodation is going to be much more expensive so we will have to top up his loan to pay that as well as living costs.

It’s a lot of money and I do worry as DH is now retired but no choice really. We have savings and we’re aware these years would be expensive but it still bites.