AIBU to say that a student loan can be enough to survive on at uni without having to get a job?

[Mickeyx0x0]

My son is in second year of uni. Due to a drop in our income due to pandemic, he has received full student loan last year and this year. If he had not got full loan, we would otherwise have made it up to the same amount with our parental contribution.

He has found the amount he has been awarded more than enough to live on, without needing to get a part time job. Perhaps it is the area his uni is in (Loughborough where costs are cheaper than some places). Maybe my son is more frugal than the average student (quite possibly; not sure about this one). I am just curious as to whether other people find that their student DC is can manage on their student loan without needing to work as well?

@tangone

Does your ds have travel costs op?

No travel costs on a day to day basis. DS lives on campus and walks to lectures. Also walks to the supermarket. At end of term, we drive over to collect him as only one and a half hours away, whereas train journey would be awkward due to lots of changes.

Dd has managed to live on her loan this year and last because there's been next to no visits to the pub, clubbing, meals out, uni societies, sports, or big events

Saved her a fortune in clothes alcohol and tickets!

Where are they that they haven't been able to go out ?
I know in England everyone has been able to go out since April.

It can be but very common for it NOT to be too. My student loan several years ago was £4200 per year and cheapest uni accommodation £100 per week for 44 weeks per year = £4,400. Then you need at least some food, uni essentials (eg stationery), potentially travel costs.

Very fortunately my parents were able to give some contribution but not the entire assumed “parental contribution” as student finance asks only about their income. It doesn’t take into account your outgoings, such as mortgage, bills, supporting other children - my parents had little left after that and had to resort to savings!

I was able to work alongside my studies but it took a while to find a job that worked for me. I had 24 contact hours a week, often spread out awkwardly across 5 days rather than being condensed into half of the week. So some days may be in uni eg 9-10, 12-2 4-5, and would often need the evenings and weekends for assignments, coursework and revision.

If going to Oxbridge and finance is an issue look at the colleges which can accommodate students for their full course. Works out much cheaper.

Oxbridge and some other universities also have generous bursaries available BUT you have to apply. I frogmarched now DH into the bursary office at Imperial in his fourth year. Bless them they took one look at his finances, had a minor fit and gave him a grant on the spot (loans company had mucked up and decided Imperial wasn’t in London).

Interestingly, they had a sliding scale of how many hours work they expected up to none in your fourth year where you did 9-6 five days a week in a research lab with work for lectures on top…

@DebIr

If going to Oxbridge and finance is an issue look at the colleges which can accommodate students for their full course. Works out much cheaper.

Almost all Oxford colleges do this and I'm pretty sure all Cambridge colleges do. But that doesn't make it cheap - my cheapest room was around £130 a week IIRC. And I didn't get a choice of rooms in my first year. Nor does picking a college ensure that's the college you will end up at!

My student loan covered exactly half of my accommodation cost (non ensuite, nothing fancy).

They calculated parent contributions.

No part time job as had a nhs course, with more hours required than most other courses and multiple full time placements, some needing me to stay in accommodation in different cities

Student jobs would have also meant that I would have had to stay over the summer and pay accommodation costs(very few term time only jobs) which sort of canceled out the earnings!

I topped DD up to the amount of the maximum loan as she got the minimum. She doesn't have a termtime job but did a bit of casual work of the summer so was able to save a bit.
She picked one of the cheapest halls at her uni and lives quite cheaply. She is vegan and likes to cook so spends less on food than a lot of students.She does have some hobbies that cost money, but seems to stay within budget.

Unfortunately DD isn't well enough to work and study a STEM degree with lots of contact hours, so we pay her rent and she lives on her loan.

<strong>The full loan should be enough - all unis have cheaper accommodation options (these have less demand than the expensive halls!) with the possible exception of Durham which can allocate to very expensive halls.</strong>

Even though Bristol has cheaper halls you get allocated halls and some don't even get one of their 9 choices.

@titchy It's the same at Newcastle. Acccommodation allocation is a complete lottery. There is no first come first served. It all gets allocated after results day, so you can apply for the cheapest accommodation at £95 a week, but get offered accommodation at £151 a week. It is luck of the draw.

MY friends Ds didnt recieve enough to cover his accomadation Costs
He had to leave Uni in the end as he couldn’t afford to eat and he couldn’t get a job as his uni hours were long and he had so much work to do in the evening. It was a choice between work and not do his assignments or do his assignments and not be able to afford to eat. My friend spoke to finance but as on paper they were good earnings they said he could get no more. The fact my friend was paying towards her mums care fees, a mortgage and supporting her other three small children and paying childcare for them. And also supporting her step brother who was homeless, was not taken into account. It was sad to see him leave as he is bright boy but he couldn’t afford it anymore.

My DN goes to Loughborough, gets full loan, and really struggles because of transport costs back home. He has to budget at least 600 per year for 3 trains back. He also has to budget for interview travel / clothing costs every year too as he’s studying Management and needs to get an internship every summer to get into the industry he wants. He thinks he might have been better off in London because then he could have access to high paying contracts over christmas etc - some of his friends are being paid £20-300/day just to contract with solicitors (they check ID for due diligence checks). So I guess it’s course and location dependant.