How can this be right? It isn’t . Martin Lewis on uni costs.

[Dowser]

Watched Martin Lewis tonight as grandson is off to uni in two years.

So...it’s £9000 a year tuition
Then the highest living allowance is presently £8700 per annum

So...if your parents earn over £25k , your maintenance loan is reduced.
Some parents didn’t realise that they were expected to top up to the full amount
One poor lad was attempting to live on £4K . His parents hadn’t realised they were meant to top up

Then there was a young girl who had to leave uni because her mum got a new partner. The students loan went down from full to low and this guy who wasn’t her father, had only been with the mum was expected to pay for someone else’s child. I think there was a shortfall of £5k

Martin Lewis rang up the student loan company and was told it was correct.

He’s looking into it.
I was shocked at that.

@hellsbellsandbatteredbananas

I am a mature student and after completing my BA and MA my student debt is £59,500 ish. I am doing a Phd this year so now aiming for the £100k mark. And I know full well I am never going to repay that debt, a vast majority of women never do. So I am not worrying about it and just enjoying my education and thinking of it all as monopoly debt.

So you are basically racking up £100,000 of debt - aka PUBLIC money/taxpayers funds, to have a degree at what 45? 50? And you don't care because you will never pay it back anyway? Seriously, how do you sleep at night?

Seriously, this shit needs to be stopped. People racking up multiple 10's of 1000's of pounds of public money, just so they can say 'aren't I clever? I got a degree at 50?'

@ADropOfReality

Here we go with middle class people with no idea of inflation wondering why a student loan in 2019 is not the same as a mortgage in 1980.

The simple fact is Tony Blair conned the whole of society into thinking they needed a degree - doesn't matter what degree, it can be Media Studies at the University of East London (formerly a sock factory in Whitechapel), we all need a degree.

What's needed is a sea-change in society. No, you don't need a 2:1 degree to become an accounts clerk, you need a decent Maths GCSE. No, a 2:1 from North London University (formerly Enfield IKEA) isn't worth the same as a 2:1 at Oxbridge. A three-year university degree should be the preserve of the academic elite: the kids who get A and B at A-Level, not those who are getting C and D at A-Level, they should be actively discouraged from wasting three more years studying (for a given amount of studying).

Kids who aren't at that standard should be getting jobs at 18, not putting it off for another 3 years and devaluing all degrees in doing so.

Agree 100% with this, and can't believe some posters have said they are talking crap. This is 100% true. Only the academic elite should do degrees; not the world and his wife. People who got A's and B's in A levels should be doing a degree. Everyone else should be steered towards careers, apprenticeships, and vocational study. Not EVERYone should go to university.

Doesn't help that many schools have 'helped' the students get good grades in GCSEs (to make the school look good,) by doing most of the course work for them/with them, and letting them do their exams 4 or 5 times til, they get at least a C!

Then when they get to college, many of these students struggle with A level study (because they couldn't even do GCSE study) and they come out with D grades and E grades and even U grades! That's OK though, coz there are plenty of 'clearing' courses for A level failures! Universities just want your £9K a year; it doesn't matter that you are categorically not even 1% university material.

And as a few people have said, it's unfair on parents (AND their children) for the amount the child gets to be decided by the parents income. And if the parents are just over the threshold, you're all fucked!

When pp have quoted costs for accommodation is that the private sector or the halls of residences.

DD halls in uni (not private company) were just shy of £7000. Most of the accommodation was a similar price. There was one choice that was around £5000 but that got filled very quickly.

His parents hadn’t realised they were meant to top up

As has been the case for about seventy years. Discretionary LA grants were de facto means tested and post-Robbins central government grants were de jure means tested. I went to university in the early eighties and by 1985 was getting a grant of £0 on the basis of my parents’ income (both teachers) being above the threshold. How people do not know this when it has been true for three generations is something of s mystery.

Dd goes to uni in September and will only get the minimum amount due to our income. Which I think is a bit over 5k. Halls are between 4-6k. So basically we will have to cover everything else. And/or she gets a job but her course is meant to be nearly as intense as medicine.

I told her she couldn't apply to anything down south as we couldn't afford it.

Thankfully she has an offer from her local uni so will be able to stay at home.

I think half the scandal here is the cost of student accommodation. I live in a city where it's possible to get a room in a shared house - bills included - for 300-350 a month, yet student accommodation is closer to 600.

DD's sounds like it will be nearly as intense as medicine NicoAndTheNiners. She will have a lot of lab work which she will find very tiring (she is under the CFS team in case anyone missed that in my previous post).

I think my head is buried in the sand over this. There are 3 years between my 2 DCs but one has missed 3 years of school due to illness, so they'll now likely both be at uni together. Hopefully by then they'll have changed the system to take that into account.

A lot of DD's friends are looking at going into the forces as they pay for the university and/or pay while training.

Reflecten, there is a world beyond people with professional parents, who understand the system. Marvellous as that may seem.

there is a world beyond people with professional parents

There is. But teaching has been pretty much all-graduate since the 1980s, and the idea that there is a school with more than one or two non-graduate staff (they'd be close to retirement now, and were rare in secondary even thirty years ago) is fanciful. Presumably schools explain university funding to their students. And if not, why not?

you know what annoyed me the most about this programme last night?

obviously I felt sorry for the Glasgow student and the fact his parents were letting him live on 4k a year and the situation with the young girl whose mum had a new partner was ridiculous and good on Martin phoning them up to try to help.

BUT BUT BUT we are in Scotland and were waiting for his advice....all we got was "its different in Scotland"....

no shit Sherlock...no advice....nowt

we can look online but would really have appreciated martins straightforward approach...wasn't to be

@NicoAndTheNiners the minimum loan for this 2018/19 was £3,324 for students living at home and £4,054 for students living away from home (not £5000 sadly). For students living away from home in London it was £6,625.
PS I'm almost certain these are the up to date figures, it's actually quite hard to find them!

Only the academic elite should do degrees; not the world and his wife. People who got A's and B's in A levels should be doing a degree

So true. It's just another money making exercise (for the universities) and a ploy to reduce unemployment. When kids are coming out of Uni with massive debts and struggling to get jobs that don't even need degrees, it's clear things have gone VERY wrong. Now it seems everyone has a degree, it's become the default/norm for jobs that don't actually need degrees.

The old ways were best where the education system was broadly aligned to the job market. Such as the old 25%/75% grammar/sec mod split, which was broadly based on the job market being 75% manual work and 25% academic related work.

Presumably schools explain university funding to their students. And if not, why not?

No they don't, well not our DS's school anyway. Not a mention of it so far. Just lots and lots of pressure for the kids to go to Uni with barely a mention of apprenticeships. Schools/teachers live in their own little bubble!

Ive got 2 at uni at the moment...im a lone parent on a very low income so both mine get the full amount....my ex husband puts £250 a month each into their bank accounts too and my eldest has a bar job on campus...they get by ok.

I think half the scandal here is the cost of student accommodation.

Yep, we were shocked at the prices of halls accommodation. Minimum for your own room of £150 per week and rising up to £175-£200 if you want a room slightly larger than a prison cell with ensuite. Slightly cheaper at around £125 per week if you want to share a room with communal toilets at the end of the corridor. You also have to pay for weeks when you're not at Uni! Absolute rip-off. Someone is making a hell of a lot of money!

Just posting to try and give a realistic idea of what payments you might have to make if your childr3n go to university.

I've had 3 kids at uni, currently 2. They get the minimum loan as usually dh is a high earner though he has been out of work for the last 8 months. I am on minimum wage. There is no obligation on parents to top the loan up to the maximum amount but obviously more money is needed as usually, the minimum loan has not been enough to cover the children's rent/hall fees. We have always topped up the minimum loan so that the rent is paid - roughly £1-2000 per child per year. We then paid them £50 a week each to cover food, etc.

But, second year onwards, if out of student halls, the rent can be a lot cheaper. My son currently rents a house with friends and the rent is actually lower than the minimum loan so we have not had to top it up at all. With my husband out of work, we have also stopped the automatic £50 a week payment for food and asked our children to tell us how much money they spend each week. Most weeks it is about £30 tops. I would rather they had some money left for drink, clothes, fun etc, but needs must at the moment, and they understand that.

I would say that if money is really tight all the time, I do think most students could work to pay their way. My daughter worked 2 nights over Christmas, stacking shelves in Tesco, and earned herself £200. A week of nights working and she would have paid for her food for a term.

So, yes, it is a drain on finances, but if you qualify for a minimum loan only, I think it is pretty much affordable, from the parents' point of view.

The tuition fees are another matter.....

My dd is in her first year, she got AAA at Alevel. Her father pays absolutely nothing towards her living costs but her step father, my husband has to pay over £4K a year. This to me is wrong, her actual father pays diddly squat and her step father who only came into her life when she was 10 pays, so wrong.

It’s awful of course, but when I was at uni, although there were no tuition fees, all accommodation and other living expenses had to be covered by loans / overdrafts or by working. I and everyone i knew worked alongside, weekends and evenings. The halls were £500 a month and an annual student loan was around £4K.

It is an eye opener for sure.

I didn't go to University, but DH did back in the 80s when he got his tuition for free, and a grant. No financial outlay from his parents (they weren't high earners), but he worked in the holidays - or signed on the dole!

My DS is in year 3 of 4 at Uni. As DH is a higher earner, my DS, his stepson is entitled to only the minimum maintenance loan. Fortunately he is in a cheaper rent area and it just covers his rent (which includes bills too). We send him some money each month for food, travel etc. as does his dad.

DS' sixth form DID explain all the intricacies of student finance to pupils and parents though quite well. There were a few sessions held at school to explain all the procedures with handouts to refer to.

On the other hand DH' son plans to start at a Uni in London. Rents there will be more than double what my DS pays. However, DS resides with his mum, who is a very low earner, so chances are he will be able to borrow enough to live on. (I am not saying we won't help out btw, just pointing it out).

So which is fair? The higher earners' offspring come out with less debt, whilst the low earners' children have significantly more as CAN borrow more to live on.

As far as I am aware, it has always been the case that parents are expected to make up any shortfall. When I left school in the 1970s, I was offered a place at a teacher training college that was over 100 miles from home. I didn't qualify for the maintenance grant due to my parents' income, which was modest by the standards of that time, so my parents would have had to cough up to help support me and I would have to find some evening work too.

My parents refused to pay anything. I was a shy 18 year old and wasn't confident of being able to find sufficient work to fully support myself whilst studying a full time course. I didn't take up the place and instead just got "any old job" locally and remained in my parents' house (paying them rent) until I married a few years later.

There were no tuition fees to pay back then either. I've no idea how anyone would manage nowadays if parents refused or are unable to help financially.

My own DCs both went to university away from home. Tuition fees and student loans had just been introduced, so both were low. Nonetheless, we paid out tens of thousands of pounds for DS and DD to cover their living costs, books, travel expenses etc while they were at university. DD's accommodation alone, for example, was over £800 per month. That was in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Full guide to how repaying student loans works

If a new graduate gets a job starting on £25k and increasing over the next 30 years to £100k+, chances are that they won't pay all their student loans before they are written off.

While their salary is £25k, they will repay nothing.

If their salary is £30k, they will pay less than £40 per month

If their salary is £40k, they will repay just over £100 pm.

The amount of debt is immaterial. Tuition fees could be a million pounds a year and the above numbers would not change.

For 2019 entry maximum maintenance loan for students living away from home is £8,944 (household income £25k or less) and minimum loan (if household income exceeds £62,212) is £4,168.
Just started looking at uni websites as son hopefully going in 2020 and to be fair all this information and much more about finance/accommodation/bursaries etc is very clearly displayed on the university websites.

At all the open days DD and I went to there were talks about student finance. We only attended one because the same talk applies to wherever you go. I urge anyone whose DC want to go to university to attend one of these talks.

Not saying this is a brilliant solution for all and it’s 12 years now since I went to university but getting married made a huge difference to me! I was classed as an independent student, no need to wait 3 years or prove estrangement from family, my loan was worked out on my DH’s earnings (student, £4000/year in the supermarket), got a bit of a grant as well.

As it happens it was a factor but not the only reason we got married and we’re still married now. Know another colleague who did this at uni purely for financial reasons but are now having a wedding and getting a ring even though they have been married several years.

Not giving it out as advice, just commenting!

Didn’t see the show but I had this.

When applying for DDs student finance they wanted my then DPs income details for the year 2015/16 despite the fact we weren’t even living together then! She was applying in 2017.

It was because we were living together then (2017) and they based calculations on previous years.

He’s not her father.
He has no financial responsibility to her.
We weren’t a household in the years they based her calculations on.
They didn’t want to know her actual fathers income details.

The whole system is utterly fucked up. I still don’t understand why a parents income is taken into account for an adult’s loan. It would be like me going into Barclays and applying for a loan, and them saying “ok but what does your mum earn”. Bonkers.