Affording Uni

[bustybetty]

My daughter (year 13) is considering uni. We are a normal family with no parental help (handouts) hubby is on 50K and my work is about 20K, we live in a modest house and have three teens as well. My question is I have just looked at the maintenance loan she would be entitled to and it doesn't even cover the cost of the accommodation - how do people afford this? We don't have spare money and I coupon where I can, we don't have phone contracts or gym memberships. I don't understand how most people afford to send their children to uni. Currently I'm thinking she will have to take a year out to work to be able to afford it.

ideas anyone?

[quote bustybetty]@stopyourhavering64 luckily the eldest didn't want to go so has managed to get himself an appprentiship just before lockdown (and got it thanks to having a drivers licence!). My younger two may also want to go. I guess I was just shocked as I though the loan would cover the accomodation with us having to provide food and her paying for entertainment. I was woefully wrong. Sometimes I think we would be better off as single parents for things like this. I think she'll have to rethink her uni career and take a year out as I can't do it for one and then not offer it to the others..[/quote]
OP you seem to have an all or nothing attitude to this, not sure why your expectations were so out of sync with reality. Although I agree that children coming from relatively stable financial backgrounds tend to be penalized for growing up in a stable family unit, that does mot mean your kids cannot go to Uni without the bank of Mum and dad. They will have huge students loans but only pay back once they earn enough - like a graduate tax.

You have 4 children on a medium income...what on earth made you think that would be easy?!

In my home country where I went to university, very few people moved out of home to go to university. Admittedly we lived in a city, but even so some people were commuting 3 hours a day or more to go to university from different suburbs or towns. In England it seems like an expectation that you get to live out of home for university but it's a huge drain on finances. Surely most people, unless you live in a very rural area, have a university or two within commuting distance? One of my colleagues is paying through the neck for his daughter to stay in halls when the family home is less than 20 minutes away by bus from the university, just so that she can have the 'experience'. That seems ridiculous and a total waste of money to me. I lived at home all through university and had a great time. I still had a part time job and paid for my own expenses too.

Do it the other way around. You pay for accommodation and she budgets for food etc from the loan/job etc.

A lot of kids cannot go to university without help from the bank of mum and dad.
Let’s put it simply for those who don’t know how student finance works:
There are no grants anymore. Even the poorest of students no longer get grants.
Everyone can apply for a maintenance loan but how much loan you can get depends on parents income (for students under age 25). If your parents are higher earners you get less loan than those whose parents are lower earners.
The parents are supposed to make up the difference in loan amount.
For example: if you earn 70k your child will get less loan than those whose parents earn £25k. This is because higher earning parents are supposed to help their children afford the costs of going to university Whilst lower earning parents are assessed as being unable to afford to help.
Of course the student who gets a bigger loan is effectively paying for themselves to go to uni as they will have significantly more student debt to repay when they graduate.

There is no free money for any students. No handouts for anybody.
The student of a single parent earning £20k is not better off than a student with parents earning 70k unless the parents of the higher earners refuse to pay the amount that they are assessed as needing to contribute.
The system is only unfair to those students whose parents won’t make their assessed contribution and those parents should be asking themselves some serious questions.
It doesn’t take until year 13 to realise that your child might have university aspirations.
The money spent on driving lessons and extra curricular activities might have been better saved in a university fund.

it is annoying that the student is liable for the debt but the amount of the maintenance loan is dependent on parental income and does not take into account other children to keep. Can cause real hardship for the student where the parents do not or cannot contribute. Don’t look at Durham, look at cheaper places in the north. Mine gets c six grand top up. I don’t go on holiday, buy clothes from charity for myself and don’t go out. I am glad at least it is not a grant he cannot access, just less of a loan, and I am glad I have an age gap between kids!

Working part time while in uni may well benefit her in long term as employers like to know someone has a work ethic and experience even if it's not in relevant sector it will help her stand out.

You need to budget better, because 70 grand is quite an income.

That's absolutely shocking that Durham are charging £7894 for a standard room JaninLondon. That amount would be the whole monthly rent on a house (private rental) or decent flat, in many parts of the country. Not London obviously. And you'd have your own bathroom!

They are absolutely milking their students and their families.

I am a single parent and would have had to fund my daughters living expenses however I lost my job due to covid so I was able to submit an in year adjustment form.
What is 'normal people' of which you speak?
Are sp's not normal?
£70k is a lot of money so maybe cut your cloth accordingly?
BTW my dsughter has been working the last 2 years whilst studying ft...thought that's what normal ppl taught their kids....self reliance, independence etc.

Went to university 10 years ago with zero financial support for parents . And I mean zero . Once asked for some money to pay for food and sent £10. My parents assumed once I was 18 I was completely independent and didn’t understand the university system having never been or know anyone who has been themselves. I don’t know how much they earned but low enough for me to qualify for grants /loans which only covered accommodation and nothing else . I worked all summer holidays and every weekend. I chose the cheapest possible accommodation, the wealthy kids that lived there did so for the parties! . Depending on the course she is likely to have days with no lectures she could work too .

I was shocked to find out most of my peers were supported financially. They didn’t spend more time studying than me or get better grades. They had more money to shop wherever they wanted / takeaways / holidays so I was slightly bitter at times but the outcome was the same and I had a great experience.

In your situation I’d suggest your daughter gets the maximum loans possible . If she doesn’t want to stay at home and why would she , she will have to get a job. If you can afford to give her something it will make a big difference to her even if it doesn’t seem a lot . Just paying for a her phone contract or taking out a loan for a MacBook would have been amazing to me.

Does she expect you to cover her costs?

@Pemba

That's absolutely shocking that Durham are charging £7894 for a standard room JaninLondon. That amount would be the whole monthly rent on a house (private rental) or decent flat, in many parts of the country. Not London obviously. And you'd have your own bathroom!

They are absolutely milking their students and their families.

They're not. Convenient for OP to state the most expensive though. Durham is pricey, but standard non-catered is £5,500 a year.

This is your DC's problem to solve, with as much support from you as you can give. Your DC needs to take some initiative here. They should be saving up, job hunting, taking a year out to work, looking for cheaper alternatives to accomodation, maybe even looking at different universities in cheaper areas or computable from home. You should offer to help in any way that you can, but ultimately if the money isn't there then there isn't much you can do.

Is that just the nice looking accommodation she has shown you ? There will be cheaper options I’m sure.

Isn’t the £7894 charge at Durham for fully catered halls? I thought there was halls under £6k if not requiring catering.

There are a lot of people who are going to be sorely disappointed when their children are starting to go off to uni and the "just get a loan" isn't the cure all they seem to think it is.

Cross posted with titchy

@Pemba

That's absolutely shocking that Durham are charging £7894 for a standard room JaninLondon. That amount would be the whole monthly rent on a house (private rental) or decent flat, in many parts of the country. Not London obviously. And you'd have your own bathroom!

They are absolutely milking their students and their families.

to be fair that figure is catered, possibly even three meals a day.

I don't think it's a good idea to do catered by of the cost. Durham is a bit if a special case due to its college system, but it does do self catered rooms too at about 5,400.

Lots of unis do cheaper halls at £100-£110. Newcastle for example.

haha massive cross post

The Durham college fees are catered accommodation, so they have no bills and no food costs. Other dependant children ARE considered in the student loan calculation. I am stunned that people do not consider this potential cost until year 13, and equally horrified that people with an income of £70k would expect their apparently academically quite able child to choose only courses at a local university (with the possible exception of London, where almost all courses are offered).

That's absolutely shocking that Durham are charging £7894 for a standard room

That will be for a room in college with power, food, cleaners etc so no addition costs. Otherwise everyone would live in private rented accommodation.

Ds1 just started uni, and he worked full time over the summer to have a decent amount of money put away before he started. He also has a part time term time job. That said, I don’t work (I’m disabled) so he got the full grant / loan. Even then he chose his uni based on what he could afford (still a very good reputation for the course he’s doing). He wouldn’t have been able to do Oxbridge / Durham etc.

@sst1234 tell me more about this financial benefit I’ve had from bringing my child up in our unstable home 🤣

50% share of mortgage & bills (not food, clubs etc - things like home insurance and gas) when married: £425

100% of mortgage & bills after divorce: £750

Difference (that I could have saved towards uni from divorce age 4 to age 18): £54,600

Hmmmmm... think I’d have saved more, being “stable”.

As I said to @bustybetty - give your head a wobble if you think it’s easier financially for single parents. You can’t just cherry pick one loan application that pays out more. (it doesn’t actually - I earn above threshold even though I am one of these single parents )

@TitsOutForHarambe

This is your DC's problem to solve, with as much support from you as you can give. Your DC needs to take some initiative here. They should be saving up, job hunting, taking a year out to work, looking for cheaper alternatives to accomodation, maybe even looking at different universities in cheaper areas or computable from home. You should offer to help in any way that you can, but ultimately if the money isn't there then there isn't much you can do.

Considering OP's child is only 17, it shouldn't be their problem to solve. Parents on OP's income are expected to contribute to their child's maintenance costs and their children receive a lower loan because of it. OP has put her child at a disadvantage by not preparing for this.

@emptyshelvesagain

ahhhhhh will we ever be reasonably off!!!

Jesus.

On 70k you are more that's reasonably off. Cut your cloth an all that, I'm sure it won't be difficult

NoT necessarily. Depends what area op Is living in, how many kids she has etc!