The cost of uni

@hughs I looked into this and London is so much more expensive even with the extra money that I’ve had to tell dd she can’t apply to London Unis.

It’s a loan now isn’t it whereas in the past it was a grant? Which does seem very unfair as it will be in DD’s name and other students with richer parents who pay won’t have this debt? Have I got that right? So I was planning to pay proportion of her student repayments that relate to the maintenance loan.

I earn 38k and it looks like I nearly get the full loan. I will pay it back for dd over time as it seems unfair that she gets saddled with it. But every time I work out the figures for what I need to save for her going to uni, it looks like I will be a couple of thousand richer each year (as she’s costing me a bloody fortune at the moment).

full grant!

@breathinbreathout I worked in Grants and Awards at my LEA in the 80s.We assessed parental income for grants. Vast numbers did not get the fill grant. It’s a total myth to say parents weren’t required to pay. Even back in the 60s they were! DH’s parents were assessed to pay towards his maintenance in the early 70s.

@JuneSoon Maybe your DC doesn’t understand about doing work outside contact hours? 5 hours is low but it’s not the only work you do. My DD did MFL degree and is now a higher earner. It’s not a waste if you have a career plan and use the skills from the degree to get a job. DD found it worth it.

Definitely worth looking at accommodation costs before applying. London is one thing but at least the maintenance loan is higher (? I think? It is in Wales anyway)

But cities with London prices without London weighting are a nightmare. So Bristol I think, Bath, Edinburgh, Durham, Exeter?, Sussex, I'm sure there are more.

Commuting rather than paying for accommodation

A part-time job to help supplement

maybe a year out and working full time

degree apprenticeship

DD is at Uni and lives in Guildford 30 face to face contact hours a week. Rent £575 per month plus bills, travel to Woking every day.
Due to DH's income she gets lowest loan. I had saved £100 a month into her child trust fund since it opened. She has choose to save that for a house deposit as her career path means she will be self employed.
ExH pays her rent, she has her loan she works 5 hours a week doing digital media for a bar so can do it when she likes and then does shifts in the bar in the holidays to cover for full time staff taking their holidays.
She is very money conscious, but still has a good life style.

Dc is yr 13.
We are in a pretty affluent area. Lots of families have told children it’s northern unis only. Several we know are having gap years to work and save.
We’ve only got one dc and have saved.
Dc has also worked pt since after her GCSEs and has saved. They don’t pay tax on pt job. If they have a skill like lifeguard or referee they can be getting good money.
Look at Accommodation costs very carefully there’s a huge difference. One of DCs choices is £140 a week en-suite, London is double or more.
Look at scholarships I think Lancaster give one for higher grades and Queens Belfast is £3000 yr 1 to any GB student getting ABB.

Unless your DC want a career that specifically requires a degree, I'd encourage them not to go to University.

For humanities, its an absolute con. DD is in her first year and has a measly number of contact hours per week. Broke up mid Dec and lectures didn't resume until last week of January. Then she's got 4 weeks off at Easter!

All the while we're paying for her accommodation and she's accumulating debt for her loan.

She would've been better off starting work and us putting our money into a LISA for her.

She's happy but the uni experience is overrated and certainly not worth the debt she's accumulating.

End of rant!

We started saving when the trust funds were a thing, a steady but not huge amount each year.
It has always be planned to use these for Uni costs.
As it has been obvious for a couple of decades now that Uni was going to involve parents helping to pay.
Tens of thousands a year is hard to find a couple of hundred a month much easier.

I suspect the poster posting this has a very different financial situation to most on here judging from previous posts.

The best thing to do is start saving when they start school. They are at school for 14 years. If you could save £1.5k each year for each DC in a high interest ISA then if they wanted Uni you would be able to help fund them. If they don't want it you could keep it to gift them towards a deposit

Can't decide if this is just hilarious, or if people actually think that most people have £1.5k a year per child "spare" for 14 years prior to their eldest turning 18

I work overtime, DH works 2 jobs, dcs work part time. One dc in a cheap city, another in expensive city and deferred a year to save up, third looking at degree apprenticeships but I don’t know what she will end up doing, dc 4 likely to go but dc1 and 2 will be through it by then and hopefully we’ll be in a better financial position. I could manage one at a time but 2 is really hard. We have a good income (ironically the OT and second job decrease the amount our dc can borrow and it’s only pennies over the minimum) but covid and Brexit hit DHs business hard and we borrowed to get us through.

Is it true that most students don’t have any help
Certainly not among my DCs friends

The best thing to do is start saving when they start school. They are at school for 14 years. If you could save £1.5k each year for each DC in a high interest ISA then if they wanted Uni you would be able to help fund them. If they don't want it you could keep it to gift them towards a deposit. It's no use saving nothing and then complaining when they reach Year 10 or 11.

Most students don’t have help from their parents.
They have to save their earnings from jobs they had whilst at school and college/6th form, take a gap year (or 2) and work full time then get part time jobs whilst at uni.

Dependent on the age of your eldest DC the flippant response @Seriously79 is live in Wales.

More seriously….

Assuming though you are in England, start saving now, but also as others have suggested a part time job in Y12 / Y13 can start to further build up the DCs own money as well.

At 60k that is near the upper threshold, although household income is net of any pension contribs I believe.

The maintenance loan thresholds have not changed for a long time. Household income below £25k attracts the max maintenance loan, that amount has not changed since 2008. Equally given the rate of inflation over the past two years the max maintenance loan is now near £2,000 below where it otherwise would be.

as many have rightly noted costs can vary considerably based on location and accommodation type. Research to allow pragmatic and informed decision making is key, ideally undertaken by the DC who wants to go to Uni. Plus as parents honest conversations with DC as to what is financially practical from a parental contribution perspective. Once started holiday jobs, especially in the long summer break, can be a good source of income. Just over 50% of students also have term time jobs, although course intensity and placements for certain subjects can place constraints on that.

Save that it was Tony Blair who brought in tuition fees. Yes rant at the Tories for loads of other things around cost of living crisis but this isn't one they brought about.

I'm sorry - but thats what DC room costs - £10,000 a year for a room in a shared house (£195 a week) Friends of his are paying more. It's not unheard of to be paying rents of £200 /£220 a week in his University city.. It is crazy but I don't set the rent charges. This is not London but a SW University. The living expenses of £7,000 are not excessive - thats £130 a week for phone, food, travel, gas, electric, water. I am just demonstrating my experience. Yes, it can be cheaper, but Im sure it could also be far more expensive if your child choose a London Uni.
Research rent rates in the University town carefully.

OP, have a good read on the MSE website about student funding.

They can all have a government loan for their course fees. Loans for living expenses are means tested. All can have a minimum amount of about £5k and those with lower family incomes can have up to the max of about £10k. So £10k is what’s expected to be needed in average and nay family who doesn’t qualify for the further maintenance loan is expected to top up to the full amount.

So OP, you might be looking at providing about £5k per year and your child taking loans of about £15k per year. Many families provide this £5k. They do it by saving for a few years if that’s needed to reach what they need. Others only think about it in 6th Form and can save some of it but won’t make the full contribution and their kids fund the rest via working through 6th form and saving or working during term time and hols at uni.

So OP, you need to work out what you can afford via savings already in existence or what you can save during the time before and during uni. Let your DC know what they can expect from you and if they will need to be funding any themselves. It might influence if they work through 6th form and their attitude to money now - ie saving some instead of spending all their earnings.

If they take the loans, most will start working life with £45-60k of debt, depending on how much maintenance loan they were entitled to.

The sooner you think about, the more control you’ll have. You might wish you’d thought about it 10 years ago, but even looking at it now and doing some planning and actually talking about it with DC can make a big difference.

TBH the worst scenarios are when the DC themselves know zero about it and only start thinking about it very late on, and have no idea if their parents will be providing anything for them or not. And if they find out the answer is no, it’s much more difficult for them. So knowing yourself what you might be able to provide and telling them helps everyone start planning and thinking ahead. Most families find it a struggle.

DS is on minimum Maintenance loan and is at Lancaster which is one of the cheaper universities for living. It’s a fully campus uni with literally everything you could need on site. Lancaster is a small northern city. Campus is just outside the city and a bus takes about 15 minutes into the city centre.

His halls accommodation is middle band (bathroom shared 1 between 2) and the cost is approx £170 per week on a 40 week contract (about £2300 a term). So his minimum maintenance loan basically only pays two terms of rent. We then top up the rest of his rent and give him £110 a week to live on (equates to about £15 a day or £500 a month but term time only). The very cheapest accommodation on campus for the coming year (sept 24) is approx £130 a week on a 40 week contract. That’s for fully shared bathrooms where you share with 8-10 people.

So at a cheaper university it’s costing us about £7k a year out of net salary for him to be there. That’s with him getting minimum loan. Having done a straw poll of my friends, the amount we give him per week of £110 is typical. Most are giving between £450 and £550 a month but it varies depending on where they go. One friend gives her daughter £85 a week but her daughter is having to supplement that by money she earns because it isn’t enough.

DS says that in his flat of 12 the typical amount is about £100 a week to live on. They all have about the same apart from 2 kids who get a fair bit more. They all overspent in the first term with freshers and so many things going on. Lancaster is definitely cheaper to live than some other university towns/cities.

He pays for all travel, food, subs, socialising etc. We pay his phone and contact lenses.

Hopefully that helps.

So your student lives on £17k py - £10k accomodation and £7k living costs?
Both figures are way more than they need to be and are unnecessarily scary to parents of future students.

I dont think its worth the 9k a year.
My halls were only 1800 a year 20y ago. Anf i lived on 130/month. I didnt get any loan and had no fees they came in at 1k the year after.
Up to 3k may be reasonable but 9 is insane.
Many on my course did benefit and went into consultancy or accounting. But i was awful at interviews. I eventually got a job as a temp and permanent there within a year. I would have hated the grad scheme as they had to pretend they knew everything with no training.
Dh course 1 stayed on and became a lecturer. Dh had to change his system/language as taught one at uni that wasnt what industry use. So that took an extra year. His other coursemate became a site manager.

Saving for uni or generally we put in child isa. The current rate is 4.15%.

I think working if they can cope with it during alevels and first years of degree is actually very important - i had no work on my cv. But might be motovator to get better degree or change subject etc

We pay hundreds of pounds a month!

They need to work when they are there, consider living at home and choose university and accommodation very carefully. Some are double the cost of others.