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.

I can't get my head around non resident parent income not being part of the calculation even if they have been paying maintenance.

I know lots of young people who got full loans and then generous top ups from non resident dad.

Others had parents struggling to pay what they should.

Others (worse) basically totally unsupported by family and struggled as so hard to prove estrangement even with support from school.

I've been offered an Oxbridge place and am torn between being open about our financial struggles to get hardship grants (which are irregular amounts and discretionary) or lying about working and getting a stealth job on the side(it's a condition of the offer that you don't work while on the course).

Maintenance doesn't cover our full rent and I have no idea how else I will afford for DD and I to live there. One of the unis aims is that no one with the ability should be prevented from attending due to financial issues. But they have a rule against working. Clearly an inbuilt lack of understanding re privilege there.

And with a child, secret job and full time undergrad studies, I don't foresee much sleep let alone fun in my future there :') oh well. Worth it for the learning.

Why wouldn't you apply for a hardship grant? It seems daft not to.

*@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.*

I'm astounded at your attitude and agree totally with newnameforthis7. This kind of attitude is what's so wrong with much of today's society.

It's going to end up like America, with parents having to have a "college fund" for their children from birth. My DS needed a degree as he wanted to work in a particular country, which will only issue work visas to those with a degree. So he really had no choice. (He is working in that country now so it did work out). We live in London and his uni was in London, so him moving out was never an option. For some people that will end up being the situation. Not living in halls might not give you the full "uni experience" but if a family can't afford it then they can't. I don't really agree with it all but that is the situation.

Kismet apply for the hardship grant. Dd can't work with the degree she's doing, that takes most of her time with the workload, working isn't an option unless she doesn't want to sleep.

I am doing a Phd this year so now aiming for the £100k mark

PhDs are not debt, or certainly not "student debt". You can't do a PhD on Student Loan Company terms. Research council and university studentships pay a stipend of about £14k per year, which is not a loan and is not repayable. In most subjects PhD students have the opportunity to demonstrate/tutor/etc at reasonable pay.

And, although I have little sympathy for the argument that "too many people are going to university" I think anyone doing a PhD with borrowed money needs their head examining. If you can't convince someone else to fund it, and you don't have the ready cash lying around, borrowing money to do something as uncertain in outcome and benefit as a PhD is pretty foolish.

@LoniceraJaponica and @MeetJoeTurquoise;
The hardship grants are one off, discretionary payments which can be applied for during your studies. I'm not starting til this autumn but will need to line up accommodation for the 2 of us.

If they choose to give a low discretionary payment it won't be enough to make ends meet every month for 3 years and I can't plan living costs around it as being a one off it's not an income. So would affect Universal Credit but by how much, nobody knows, as they have no official guidance on how much I'll get anyway.

Or I could have a job and be exhausted but know for a fact what I have to live on and be able to supply that information to any lettings agents etc.

I’m glad that this is being discussed. It’s an issue that younger parents planning their families need to be aware of, as it certainly isn’t going to be any better in eighteen years. There are implications for the number of children that families may want to have, and their age gaps.

My DIL has two DC`s 4 and 2. She started saving from the day they were born after she calculated how much it will cost them. They would have liked a larger family but she says who can afford it these days.

We downsized so have a pot of money, that will luckily let us see our third DC through uni.

@kismetjayn Accept the place and talk to the college’s Bursar. Most Oxbridge colleges are very wealthy and offer generous financial aid.

"with parents having to have a "college fund" for their children from birth."

We started saving for DD's university education when she started secondary school. She was offered a place at an independent school, and we could have afforded the fees at a stretch. We decided to send her to the local comprehensive school where she thrived and still ended up with AAA at A level. And now we can support her through university.

I don't understand all these parents paying so much.

My dcs took out the loans and make up the difference with money from their jobs. I give them £300 each a year (£100 at the start of each term to restock their cupboards) and that's it.

"I don't understand all these parents paying so much."

Because some DC have intensive courses that having a term time job would be unsustainable - for example students with health issues/disabilities/Oxbridge students. Of course some just want to party all the time, and I know a few of those.

With 30 contact hours a week plus self study it would be very difficult for DD to have a job outside of the holidays due to her extreme fatigue. What don't you understand about that?

it certainly isn’t going to be any better in eighteen years

I don't know. When reality sets in and parents/children realise there are other options and therefore university numbers start to fall, we'll inevitably see reductions in tuition fees and halls rental costs as universities struggle to fill them.

Fairenuff

As already mentioned, some students are not allowed to work in term time.

It was means tested like this when I went to uni yonks who, before the tuition fee hike.

My parents gave me no extra money. I had to work 3-4 shifts in a bar to top up my loan.

Annoyingly, I had friends with fairly well of parents who were divorced, so they means tested on one parent's wage, got the full loan, got top ups from their parents and didn't have to work.

It wasn't fair and as you can see I'm still not I over it 😂

we'll inevitably see reductions in tuition fees and halls rental costs as universities struggle to fill them.

Perhaps. I think it’s highly likely that some elite universities will go entirely private in order to set their own fees, like the American system.

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/17/oxford-cambridge-universities-private-raise-fees

Because some DC have intensive courses that having a term time job would be unsustainable - for example students with health issues/disabilities/Oxbridge students. Of course some just want to party all the time, and I know a few of those.

Well I don't think parents should be funding partying all the time if they don't want to obviously. There will be some students with health issues or disabilities who are not able to work but the majority are. Even Oxbridge students, and I know a few of those.

With 30 contact hours a week plus self study it would be very difficult for DD to have a job outside of the holidays due to her extreme fatigue. What don't you understand about that?

My dd is the same. She works in the holidays. They get a lot of holidays, especially in the summer when they don't have exams looming.

So many parents fall into the 'expected to pay' myth without actually looking at how the students can fund themselves. My two are not doing anything special, they just work out of term time. They do have jobs in their uni towns too but that's not many hours and just for fun/experience/beer money.

I mean these students need to come out of university with more than just a degree. Employers are going to want to see their work ethic, initiative, ability to prioritise, etc. and of course references from employees.

Otherwise, it's a long time to be out of work and nothing to show for it but a degree which everyone else applying for the job will also have. It's good for them to work. It's good for their self esteem and confidence too

Not many courses give you 30 contact hours. The downer to getting a job is the disorganised way lectures are organised. DS said one lecturer rarely turned up at the 6pm lecture he had a business of his own to run and struggled to get there. Another DS swore was stoned sometimes.

If unis. are going to charge students basically 18k for attending/accommodation, then they need to organise working type hours for student lectures. How can you get a job for extra money with this schedule. It is not easy, some employers are adaptable, many not.

Two DS`s have worked holidays whilst at uni. they found the jobs whilst at school and had employers that were happy to see them again in their breaks.

Third DS has had a job since 16, they say they will keep him on to do holiday cover. That is their money.

we'll inevitably see reductions in tuition fees

How? Most universities make a loss, or at best break even, on teaching. The idea that universities are some massive money-making scheme based on home/EU students' £9250 has no basis in fact. The universities whose finances are most precarious are those unable to cross-subsidise from international (non-EU) students. The same's true of halls: leaving aside that most students don't live in hall, and increasingly the halls aren't owned by the university anyway, they are hardly wildly profitable schemes.

There's a common narrative that UK universities are rolling in money from home and EU students. They aren't.

reflectant unis. went from 3k a year to 9k a year overnight. If they are in an even worse state now than they were then, some will go to the wall. Some will privatise. Perhaps they should have thought long and hard before dumping their technical college status and courses. I guess it is simple economics.

Over a 100 USA unis. have gone bust I read.

The situation for divorced parents is very unfair both for the child and the parent. It should reflect the income of the parents, not the mother plus partner.

But otherwise parents are just being shit if they refuse to support their children at Uni. You cut your cloth surely, just like you do when you have them and have similar costs for childcare for pre-schoolers. It's not like it's a surprise. We're in the sweet spot between high childcare costs (~£15Kpa at it height for us) and Uni costs (we'll only have 2 at Uni at the same time so 2 years of similar costs to max childcare) but are living well within our means knowing that we'll have increased costs in a few years. It's not hard and these are parents with above average incomes.

eflectant unis. went from 3k a year to 9k a year overnight

No they didn't. They went from 3k plus the HEFCE block grant to 9k without the HEFCE block grant. The net income at planned numbers remained unchanged: it just meant that the money followed the students. The idea was that popular institutions

Do you seriously think that universities suddenly had three times as much money when the tuition fees changed?

The idea was that popular institutions would be rewarded for recruiting sufficient to fund the courses, without HEFCE acting as a brake, and that less popular institutions would not be able to continue to offer uneconomic courses on the back of the block grant. It didn't reallu succeed for a whole stack of reasons, but the idea was basically not totally stupid. The revenue was constant, though: the sum of the tuition fees and the block grants was a constant.