I think an 18 year old is an adult -AIBU?

[Drdoomish]

They can get married
They can live under their own steam away from parents
They can take out loans and get into exceptional debt
They can fight and die for our country
They can become an MP or councillor
They can legally get pissed in a pub
They can get their own tattoo
They can sit on a jury
They can leave education
And do all the things that adults can do...

So why, WHY, do the government use a parents income to decide how much living cost loan they will lend to an 18-24 university student?

YABU - An 18 yr old uni student is still a dependent
YANBU - An 18 yr old uni student is an adult in their own right.

There is absolutely no legal obligation on the parents to support the student. It is only implied but they don’t have to give them a penny.

Because they want better off parents to contribute to what is a limbo land between full time education and contributing to the economy?
Personally I ‘m torn on this. I get fed up filling out forms on my finances when like you say they are adults.
On the other hand giving 9k x3 to rich kids which will only be clawed back slowly will soon add up.

You can not go from 10% of people having a degree to Blair’s dream of 50% and socially engineer it perfectly within one generation. @EuphemiaFuckaduck so few people focus on the point we have both made. He was basically the catalyst in higher education that made it in to the utter shitshow it is today and I was glad I could retire early. It had to be funded somehow. Lord Dearing wrote the report that had been commissioned by the Conservatives and recommended fees but the Labour Party under Blair introduced student tuition fees, everyone conveniently forgets that.

It is just not possible to put huge numbers of young people through the higher education system for free unless you go back to much smaller graduate numbers. In theory a graduate should earn a lot more over a lifetime. That was very true for my generation, it isn’t now and there are not enough graduate jobs for all those fresh faced graduates.

My DS has grown up hearing about Higher education from the coal face as DH and I both work or worked in academia. We were both delighted when he chose to do a degree apprenticeship and was accepted on to one. One year in, no tuition fees and earning 27k per annum. He has saved us a lot of money, not just himself. I recommend this as a route but it’s more competitive than the regular route to a degree.

It's possible we'll have two starting at uni at the same time even though they're two years apart in age as the eldest has taken a slower path to higher education than the other is likely to. Going off the chart I've posted we could be expected to find a spare 16,000 each year.

And that table makes it clear it's "up to..."

The figures I was shown during the college open evening last night make it clear that my daughter will be loaned £3500 less each year because she lives full time with me, the higher earner, and not her dad. That in itself is ridiculous.

Could she “move in” with her dad over the summer so she can get the higher amount? The system is unfair so I think you need to do what you need to do.

I left uni in 1988 and the current loans scheme was still at proposal stage then (we still had grants, though thankfully not tuition fees). Grants were also means tested on parents income but the difference is that they weren't repayable.

There were already protests about the proposed new loans scheme back then, long pre-dating Martin Lewis. The Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments ignored them and ploughed on ahead anyway. Labour promised to reverse the scheme if they got into power, but they never have either.

I do understand what you are saying and how frustrating it is, but student finance being based on parental income is far from new and pre-dates loans.

We are the squeezed middle too so I feel your pain and can't wait for the day when we no longer have to deal with Student Finance England, who I now just consider a bunch of government loan sharks anyway. That day cannot come soon enough.

They are impossible to deal with if anything changes or goes wrong (they couldn't cope at all with my DD's year abroad at all last year and caused major issues which our MP had to sort out).

DD is just about to start her final year at Cambridge now, so the end is hopefully in sight for our dealings with Student Finance England. I can't wait!

I agree.

I live in an area that has traditionally had a low take up of higher education, in fact education itself is not valued. I have seen many young people whose parents earn well (often in a trade) who refuse to support their children in further and higher education for whatever reason.

Then there are more complicated cases that don't fit estrangement but where the relationship is toxic.

I could cry for some of these young people.

Having read all this I take it back, the current system looks to be unfair. I still don’t like the idea that wealthy people may end up being subsidised by lower earning taxpayers but I can see that the current system is making it very hard for some students / families.

@lightisnotwhite so do you cut the amount for everyone so they all say get 5k which covers halls (cap the fee like tuition fees) then they work or parents pay living costs like when they are at college

The 18 year olds whose parents have not infantalized them throughout their teen years tend to be adults. The spoon fed ones tend to operate on a much lower emotional and practical level.

I just had to sign a release form so my 18 year old daughter could go on a day trip today. She not at school this is a FE college. She was insulted.

I don't think many Unis have halls for students after the first year. I deal with the bursaries for Care Leavers in my county, and the vast majority of those at Uni seem to be in private rentals of some kind e.g. bedsits or shared rented houses.

Christ no. How is that fair that the poorer kids have to hold down a job in Tesco whilst the others swan about subsidised by mum and dad.

Perhaps the fairest would be poorer families could apply and get better loan rates or grants as well. Otherwise everyone else is entitled to a standard loan without parental disclosure ( universities give grants and bursaries for those in difficult circumstances),

Well off families do a lot more than top up to the full loan. Topping up to the full loan would not leave much left for living costs when rent alone for halls is coming in at £7K+ .

YANBU - I totally agree, if an 18 year old is by law an adult in every other way why are they still technically a child when it comes to tertiary education?? It all comes down to money.

Up here in Scotland there are no tuition fees yet a lot of Scottish young people are being rejected from the major universities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews
i cannot remember the % but the majority of students in these universities are from England or oversees as they bring in more money. Unless they are from deprived areas of course, my own DD was asked if she was from a SIMD 1 or 2 area as it would up her chances of getting in! We are lucky in that my DC will be able to commute to uni if they choose to thus saving money, the only young person I know who actually moved to uni this year parent was a single parent and got a bursary. Most others are travelling in and out.

I had to wait until I'd married and was living with my husband so his income and not my father's income would be assessed for a grant.
I got a full grant that covered my living costs.

My father refused to declare his income or pay a penny towards a degree sadly. We were all girls. At least we were all treated equally.

It was a common thing in the 1980's.

Parents not contributing to their student offspring is not a new phenomenon.
I went to Uni in the 1970s ( I am very old) before fees and grants were means tested, but they took into account some outgoings- siblings definately. I went after the age of majority decreased to 18.
I got a full grant which was enough to survive on, but I had friends whose parents would not top up lesser grants for their children, so they had to work, which was difficult with a lab heavy course.

DD is considering degree apprenticeships @CharSiu but there is a dearth of them in our area. DD sees the value of earning and studying, so is considering moving for the right one, just as she would for uni. They all seem to be in careers that she has no interest in though 😔 If the right one pops up, she's ready to pounce!

Having come from a hand to mouth childhood, I feel this quite keenly. University transformed my life prospects. I would never have gone as an innocent 18 year old if it meant incurring a £60k+ life debt.

I think the fairest way is not to use parental income to allocate the maintenance loan amount. All students should be allowed the maximum. Parents will always top it up if they choose to. The difference should be that those coming from poorer households can access significantly lower interest rates on their loan, and have the salary at which they start to repay heightened.

Would like to join the several posters who have pointed out that LOTS of us protested against the whole concept - even when it was being presented to us as a way to get away from depending on parental income, and especially when they back-tracked on that within the first few years.

redskytonights · Today 08:38

“There are an awful lot of students whose parents' income means they are only eligible for minimum loan but, even with working a part time job, they don't have enough to subsist on.

University is fast becoming the preserve of the rich (who can afford it) or the very poor (who will be eligible for more bursaries etc). Those in the middle are having to make hard choices. It's becoming increasingly common to both stay in your home town for university and to take a gap year purely with the intent of saving money to fund university.”

I totally agree with this @redskytonights.We had a friend whose son arrived at uni in this exact situation, lowest loan amount, needed to work, but his timetable made it very difficult. We have other friends who found it cheaper to go local, even buy a car and commute, or for the one who only had lectures two consecutive days a week an hour away, air B and B it, or use a budget hotel chain one night a week. It really does seem a nonsense at best, a bit of a racket really; holding kids and middle earners to ransom.

Why did no one complain about it when it was brought in, except Martin Lewis? What do you suggest I do?

Because the expectation of parental support has been the system since before ML was born....

Perhaps we should follow the system used in Wales in England ( might be N Irland) Eveone gets the same generous loan about £12000 but the amount. Of that what they have to repay is dependent on family income. I also believe if the pay off £50 in the fist year , that year is written off. DS is in Liverpool. Lots.of Welsh & Irish students. As an English student he is far worse off than both. He doesn't get max loan, we are a single. Income family with an additional ill health pension. His loan doesn't quite cover his halls and I send him.£200 a month to feed him . Its wrong. As for Scotland as a scot.seeing my Niece do a degree with no fees and free public transport, prescriptions etc makes me.very angry at the system ( not her) . At Glasgow they were very clear she told me.3rd students scot, 3rd other home nations and a 3rd foreign. Doesn't sound like too much of a disadvantage to me. DS say his course make up.is similar

Saw a friend today who's son started his degree aged 23. Even though he'd been living away from home for 5 years and he'd been working full time, her salary was still the thing that was used to calculate how much loan he could access.

She said the alternative to that was that she and he had to sign a piece of paper saying that he was disowned. She couldn't sign in good conscience, neither could he.

Absolutely bonkers

You can't drive a lorry, fly a helicopter or adopt a child till you're 21 though, so...