To think the government needs to something quickly to help families financially supporting children at Uni.

[Fl0renc3]

Mortgages are going up( ours will by 300 when we remortgage v soon), energy bills will be going up hugely, ditto food, petrol etc…. Already making all the savings we can.

We have got to start paying our child £500 a month to live on from October on top. It was already going to be a squeeze.Her bills will be rocketing too so who knows if what we were planning to give her will be enough.

We don’t have a money tree and have 2 other children due to start Uni in the next few years. I know the poorest and the richest will be ok re funding for their child at Uni but there is a massive band in the middle who won’t. Whether or not you can go to Uni shouldn’t be decided on parental income( thanks Tories) but those already there and just starting are going to be in dire straits as are the families supporting them.

Has she applied for disability benefits if Severe MH problems?
I guess people are probably presuming that if she’s well enough to move away to uni and be independent she could do some work whilst being supported at home. But obviously all that is totally a private matter for you as a family to work out whether that’s possible.

The fundamental problem is that every school leaver needs to go to Uni and you can thank Blair for that one.

Being lazy is not a mental health.issue.

Hilarious. 😂😂

🤣
With one income over £60K then even if the other parent is working part time it’s likely that puts you into the £70K+ lowest loan bracket.

Which is still about £6K a year, outside London, so quite why she needs another £6K a year I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️

Please do come back with the actual numbers though. That sweet spot where you can give up your job and live like royalty on all the benefits. Don’t forget your mortgage and pension payments. I repeat: you are cherry picking. Sure you get less on this maintenance loan situation - but the “squeezed middle” have done pretty well on other things. Game the system by all means - just do share exactly how you’re going to do it. You might lose your nice rural mortgaged house -but hey, you’ll have a flat screen TV and a goat. Happy days 👏🏻

Yes, DD's maintenance loan only covers her annual rent (and she's in a cheap city) - so all the living expenses have to be covered by us or by her. She works hard in the holidays but a demanding course doesn't really allow her to take a term time job.

Student maintenance loans have barely increased in a decade. So with inflation rocketing, like many other parents, I'm now not only struggling with my own bills, but also having to find even more cash to subsidise another household's. It's too much!

This is also a product of the belief that a place at university is a right. That devalues it, in my opinion. What’s needed is more varied routes into working life and less reliance on a university education that may not lead to a career.

It’s many years since I went, but every holiday was spent working. I’ve cleaned in a hospital, worked in a shoe shop and a dry cleaners, in a cafe and been a temporary posture. If a young person’s mental health is not robust, I’d query whether this is the right time to go away from home anyway.

There was a thread recently about the accommodations that have to be made by universities and lecturers regarding their students. If we go too far, we are not setting them up for a resilient working life.

Your MH point is slightly confusing because on the one hand you say your DD is signing up for a hugely intensive degree, so intensive that she can't work alongside it, but on the other hand her MH isn't good enough to work a part time job?

If she has MH issues that are so significant you're setting her up to fail. It will be money down the drain for an intensive degree, the pressure will be way too much. Defer her place and work to get that sorted first.

They’re definitely jobs out there, just not particularly glamorous or highly paid. Depending on where you live/ have access to, caravan sites/ holiday accommodation always need good, reliable cleaners. The large majority of this work will be needed in the school holidays. Also worth looking at theme parks for seasonal staff vacancies.

You cut cloth to what you can afford. I lived at home during uni and worked my ass off with 3 jobs over the summer.

Yabu. Uni is a choice, not a right, and it's not for the government or public to subsidise it.

Could she go a local university and live at home? I did that.

Because most student loans don’t get paid back because despite spending 3 years at university most people don’t earn enough for long enough to repay the loan.

I’m aware of how the system works but you are very much mistaken if you think the ‘extra loans’ mean these students don’t struggle to make ends meet.

I actually don’t think the taxpayer should subsidise rich kid’s choices to go to Uni 🤷‍♀️ I believe the means tested parameters should change with the cost of living rise, in the same way it’s changed for benefit claimants, however I don’t think it’s a system that should be scrapped

I can not see how student accommodation costs aren’t going to go up therefore the loans need to go up. Students are amongst the poorest in society, they need to be thought of and catered for too in the tough few years ahead.

Maybe she should get a job while hospitality is still crying out for staff. Ok so the course is intensive but how do you think other students cope?

Just to clarify then OP - your daughter has significant mental health problems which means she can't possibly get a job but she's about to go to university where the course is so intensive she's been advised by the university not to work?

Why does her MH impact finding work but not uni? What does she do after uni? Will it just be better by then for her to find work?

Awful lot of excuses here and no, I'm not willing to increase my taxes to fund your daughter (and others alike) having spending money for uni when she can't be bothered to get a job. I actually worked two jobs in uni whilst having a young child and still managed a very good result. I think you're getting a hard time here because you are being extremely entitled.

It’s just excuse after excuse.
You can’t ferry her around as you both work full time.

So that’s one of you on over £60K and one on at least £18K.
And both these jobs are 7 days a week then? Neither of you is available to drop her off for weekend shifts, you both work weekends?

Yes, she'll have to get a job. I don't actually know anyone who hasn't had to work their way through uni.
My sil had 2 kids and a part time job when studying nursing. I also did a degree whilst working part time and single handedly raising a child and running a home. I'm sure you're dd will cope with a part time job with no other responsibilities.

Maybe you are actually too poor to be part of the "squeezed" middle?

Yeah, they do need to though of. By their parents in their £80K+ households 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s not too late for her to defer for a year and work part time. If she is struggling with her mental health then sending her off to uni with all these money worries is a recipe for disaster.

If you live rurally is there no chance she can find work in the same area as you and your partner? You can drive her in with you In the morning. I did the the 1 hour commute with my dad in the morning when I was 17.

As for what people are saying about working during studying helping job prospects, it’s is definitely true. I took a gap year, worked 40 hour weeks during the holidays and I still struggled to get a job (honestly unless it’s a very specific degree for a job an apprenticeship may well be a better career choice).

And as for an intensive course, my younger sister is going into her third year of medicine and works relief shifts as a carer. Of course she has to cut her hours back at certain times, but it’s always there when she needs extra cash. She can work as little as 4 hours and in the summer she can really up her hours.

If you can’t afford it, and you can’t make sufficient cutbacks in your own living expenses, then the solution is obvious:

DD defers her place for a year and gets a full time job to earn enough for uni shortfall.

Two of my son’s friends on his course did just that.

@Fl0renc3

Your daughter isn’t entitled to digs. Yes the rent will go up, perhaps that might mean a local university instead if you as a family haven’t planned for this?

Incredible concept to some people I know but was certainly my reality lol 😂. My “digs” was my bedroom 👍.

Nice to see mental health dismissed as a bingo tick thus illustrating complete ignorance as to what it can involve.

I'm the last person who would dismiss MH given that I live with a chronic mental health condition serous enough to be classed as a disability, and I work with teenagers with MH issues. But in the nicest possible way, OP, I still think YABU. If your DD's MH is so poor she cannot cope with a part time job in the holidays how will she cope with an intensive course at uni? How will she cope living away from home?

Had you started the thread by saying she can't work because of her MH you may have received different responses. But first, you tried to say there are no jobs. Then when people challenged this you blamed your rural location and lack of transport. Then I think you gave yourself away by saying why should she have to get a job when others don't. This makes it sound as though the real barrier isn't your DD's MH but your belief that she shouldn't have to work because all these working class kids are getting government handouts and living it up at uni. So you want the government to "do something" (by which you mean give you money) because you don't like the fact that some young people may be getting something your DD isn't.

I think you have a very rose-tinted view of the experience of kids from very low-income families, and no idea of the challenges they will face in trying to get to uni or how likely they are to have to drop out due to various pressures. I work with some kids who live in genuine poverty, I mean the kind of poverty that shortens your life expectancy due to unsafe housing and poor nutrition. Education is a potential escape route for those kids and, whilst my own DC will be unlikely to get any sort of "help" and we will certainly feel the pinch, I would never begrudge them. I certainly wouldn't want funding taken away from them and given to MC kids like mine so they don't have to get a part time job.