AIBU To judge parents who refuse to pay their contribution to student maintenance loan at Uni?

[ThunderandPharoah]

Have got some friends who are not going to stump up for their parental contribution when their DD starts Uni this year. Can't help thinking that this is a pretty low thing to do as they are not exactly short of money. Would you judge?

At 18 I'm not responsible for them so in theory they can live where they like.

And that's part of the problem daisy and one of the reasons the recent augur report focused on finance.

The university loan system makes me really cross.

I just think it's so unfair that my DS gets the minimum loan, and the top up we need to pay will adversely affect his younger siblings. We will still be continuing financially towards DS when he's 22.

On the plus side he will have a smaller amount of student debt than someone whose parents earn less than us. How is that fair?

Not everybody lives a commutable distance from a suitable uni course and need to pay for accommodation close to uni.

If the student is able to work part time to fund their studies/lifestyle then really I think they should. If not, then yes parents do need to help financially, which really isn't made clear to parents.

"It goes right back to the days when there were no tuition fees and students had grants not loans. The amount of grant was based on your household income, and parents were expected to make up the rest."

Yes, but this was for living costs only. The actual education was free. That's how it worked for me. Your grant, if you got one, was dependent on the parents' income. Out of about 10 friends, only 4 of us got grants because the others came from families that didn't qualify for any help e.g. two professional parents.
I knew one boy whose mother worked in a cinema and he had no father. He got the full grant, but it wasn't enough. He had to take a year out to work to save money. I thought he went back afterwards, but someone told me he ended up dropping out. Very unfair.

I had to fend for myself from the age of 16 including when I was at uni. I worked part time to survive, many students do.

I don’t judge parents who refuse to mollycoddle their adult children at all, they’re setting them up well for the real world.

Benes We chose to pay the tuition fees upfront, and ds had no loans whatsoever. He was going to get sod all for the maintenance loans, so we decided to bite the bullet and pay for the lot. We would have paid off his loans had he taken them, and it seemed pointless to incur interest when we didn't need to do so.

Sorry I don't agree

My parents had a high income on paper (dad was self employed) but also very high outgoings due to the nature of the business and not very strategic accounting. My mum was working 3 part time jobs just to keep us treading water. I had two siblings that were also looking like they would go to university in the years immediately after me.

This meant I got a very small loan and had to work several jobs through university and use all the savings I had saved up to go to university by working evenings, weekends and holidays through sixth form.

My parents provided plenty of practical and emotional support (proof reading etc), but couldn't financially support.

It has done me no harm at all to learn to be very self sufficient from adolescence and I think we are raising a generation of young people that are being deprived of the opportunity to build resilience and problem solving skills that come with having to balance crappy low paid jobs with studying.

Instead we are telling them that they are too special and busy to have to have a part time job and that attitude is really showing in the young adults fresh out of university we have applying for roles over the last couple of years.

I hate the 'snowflake' analogy but the lack of resilience and ability to take responsibility for their own direction in life is really quite concerning.

They can get a job? a part time job really wouldn't impact massively on studies (I got a first and worked 30ish hours a week when I was at uni).

I think it's important to learn to be self sufficient. If I had University aged DC now, I'd give make sure their basic needs were met (accommodation and food) and nothing else.

I agree with PP that this is another way privilege gets entrenched. We will have to top up and we can comfortably afford to do so ( we currently pay school fees so uni will be cheaper than school). The vast majority of DS1’s school friends will be able to top up. So DS1 can pick the course and university that suits him and won’t be obliged to work.

I have seen people in my extended family choosing to stay at home and go to the less well regarded local Uni although their grades were good enough for a more highly regarded institution to save money. Their parents earned a bit above the full loan threshold but had several other children.

"I know a bright, academic 18 year old who has an offer from a high-ranking university.

The joint parental income is over the maximum threshold, so she only qualifies for the basic maintenance loan (not enough to cover rent alone, let alone start on living expenses). Her parents are not going to contribute financially at all.

She has been working a lot of hours to try to earn enough money for university, continuing to work through her A-level exams, and is now working two jobs. However, she also has outgoings (e.g. car insurance and petrol needed to get to main job) and has not managed to earn enough.

She has deferred the offer so she can work full-time for a year, but realistically I wonder if she will end up going at all. "

This is so sad.

It depends whether they are refusing, or just can't afford it. It's a bit of a tricky system as it's means tested on parental income, but outgoings aren't taken into account...so you could have a family who's income is over the £60k threshold meaning their dc get the minimum loan of around £3800, but they may have several dc, a big mortgage etc.
Do you actually know the ins and outs of their finances? I have plenty of close friends who appear to be well off (big house, nice cars, good jobs etc) but who tell me they are overdrawn/in debt, so appearances can be deceptive.

Well said the chain
ExH suddenly left while DD1 was 1 st year university. I quickly applied for divorce so could prove for her second year that my income was less than £30 000 and she could get full maintenance loan ExH gave her extra ( as he earns over £100 000) and life was good. She had full maintenance loan and extra from her Dad.
4 years later DD2 is about to start a 4 year course. EXH has moved in with someone( the women he left me for) and still earning loads but also wants to have a flash life style will happily give DD2 extra but won't pay full maintenance loan. I've met someone but can't live together as his income would be taken into account for DD2 maintenance loan as it's household income.
I can't afford to pay maintenance loan and my new OH has never actually lived with her and has his own children to support. So my life is on hold for the next four years so I can give DD2 the same amount as DD1 while E xH has moved on.

"I had to fend for myself from the age of 16 including when I was at uni. I worked part time to survive, many students do."

You sound a bit like the three Yorkshire men sketch.

Littlefairywren - completely agree.

I was very academic but did not go to uni as I would NEVER have expected my parents to contribute financially and could not afford it myself. I was unsure of precisely what I wanted to do and therefore felt uni was inappropriate. I still feel it is unless you want to be e.g. a doctor. I now have higher professional qualifications than a degree as I studied whilst working.

When my child is getting towards uni age I expect to have an informed discussion with them about their choices and reasons before I would decide whether to help. I would be hoping to retire around that point not work until I'm 70 to pay for 3 years of a pointless degree only for them to get pregnant and end up working part time at the local shop (so many years of worrying ahead....)

OP perhaps your friends have thought about this too? You haven't mentioned the reason for their child wanting to go to uni. Perhaps they feel it's a bit woolly and are trying to encourage them to consider it more deeply.

I imagine in any case that if the child got desperate they would come to the rescue and not leave them destitute...

I would judge if they could obviously afford it but weren't willing to sacrifice one of their six holidays abroad etc. If they couldn't afford it or had outgoings that were not flexible so they couldn't contribute without going into debt, then yes I would judge. I'd look at each situation case by case.

We are expecting dds will qualify flr 3-5k less than the total annual maintenance loan so we are saving hard to put 18k total away before they go, then we should be able to cover it. We would struggle with this if we still had a motrgage. .

FIf the student has to get a job to survive, they have reduced time to do their studies. This means that in practice there are subjects like Medicine (with a heavy workload) that they will not be able to do*
Are you a medical school student? I expect not because if you were you'd know that many of them do a tuslly work alongside their studies and still manage to do well.

What most students who have to work miss on is the ridiculously expensive boozing parties that go on during uni. Those that left your brain fuzzy and make you miss lectures.

I lived with two people at uni who’s household incomes were so low having an 18 year old meant they lost CB and the 18 year old couldn’t contribute to the house so they were way worse off. One girls family were so broke even sending her with a bag of basic groceries at the start of term would have tipped the families budget over the edge.

my relative had the full grant, worked too, but still no one could afford the graduation ceremony.
so much taken for granted now.

I wouldn't help an adult dc financially at uni. That's what a student loan is for.

I think it's bad if parents could afford to contribute but choose not to.

Dd is starting a course where apparantly students put in 60-70 hours a week. So not sure that all students can get a p/t job to top up their loans. I can't see her being able to work much.

We can help her financially and I would do everything I could to make sure she could afford to go to uni.

We don't seem to be getting anywhere here, some posters are so confused about the facts to begin with or are not reading the OP - I think its good that there's a vote button on this one!

Ultimately, if I could possibly do so, I'd support my kids as much as I possibly could. I prioritise their needs, their future and their opportunities, even over mine. My DDs both want to go to uni, I will do what I can to make that happen.

I do 110% judge people who can afford to help their kids and then don't. And as for "oh pity those poor people who earn more and have more outgoings!" - WTAF!

scary but very few people are in a position to do that. It's only beneficial if you have that money spare and even then it's not necessarily recommended as there is no guarantee your child would ever pay it back.

Very, very, few people are in the privileged position to have that amount of cash spare.

Oxbridge, Imperial, Bristol... ban or restrict working thus pushing out some middle income kids from applying if going relies on working. How does that aid social mobility?

My husband had the lowest level loan as his parents where earning a lot. They didn't help him with any funds. He was also on a engineer degree which was at least 35 contact time a week and you had to study on top of that and a group project as well as an individual project in the final year. He then went onto a master of science at another uni where he had all of that in a shorter academic year. During all this the uni stressed that he can not be working on top of this. He worked as many hours as physically possible in the holidays

The money he got our for accommodation only. When I pointed this out to his parents (we where dating at the time) they didn't seem to care. I ended up moving with my husband so I would work and support him. 7 years later his sister went to uni and they are paying for everything.