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.

It only takes a glance at the going university supports groups on FB to see there are many parents who are shocked that the cost of university accommodation isn't covered by the loan.

And £50 per month is only just going to cover topping up a minimum loan for a three year degree. If your adult child needs to do a foundation year or wants to do a masters £50 per month for 18 years isn't going to cover it all.

I think it isn’t well known how low the loans are versus actual cost of accommodation and how even low household income stops the 18 yr old getting a full loan. There’s been two long threads on mumsnet in last few weeks of parents caught unawares and lots on the wikikau facebook.
Have seen several posts of the dc’s halls bill this term is £3000 and loan is £2000 what the heck do we do we haven’t got £1000 type posts - naive but not uncommon.
Or mum on low income living with a boyfriend high earner (he’s not dad or step dad). Parental contribution exceeds mum’s net monthly earnings?!
Lots think it’s more in the help out with bag of shopping territory not saving from birth.
No allowance for twins or siblings. Lots of people go for 2 yr child spacing then face huge contributions.
I’m up north in a fairly affluent area, dc at state grammar. Many have been told northern uni only by parents or gap year or live at home.
Scope for pressure- we’ll pay for x course but not what you want. Local uni offer it no need to go elsewhere when child has grades for top uni.
I’m mum of a dc yr 13 and have told colleagues. Those with pre schoolers/primary school had no idea it could be £500 plus month a net parental contribution.

So how to do we fund the huge expansion of uni education then? Who should pay? All those paying tax who didn’t go themselves? Or should we reduce uni participation?

Theres a lot of ignorance on here. Few parents save from birth but plenty look at household income if Dc do well at primary school. Who lives in a bubble where they don’t consider the future of Dc? Most are aware of costs and many thousands of parents do pay each year. Every uni has a hardship fund and all poor DC get the full loan and probably a bursary too. They are the least likely to be hard up!

Also it’s not a loan in the bank loan sense. It’s a grad tax. You are not required to pay it off. It’s a completely different agreement. DD1 has paid hers off at 29. DD2 hasn’t paid anything yet! We could have avoided the loans but we did see it as something they should have and all their friends did. I’ve certainly met people who paid up front and their DDs worked for a few years not earning much so would have paid little each month. One then became a SAHM and worked part time so would have paid £0 anyway. It’s better to use money for a house deposit if you only have £30,000 lying around. If DC are going to be big earners, get them to pay all of it off. Never use inheritance for a bit of it.

Given that we have over 1/4 million school leavers starting uni every year, how many are put off in reality? Few. There’s also apprenticeships to look at. Uni isn’t the only option at 18.

I know that not everyone can save but if you don’t just save into a cash account then you can generate a decent amount through investing in a stocks and shares ISA (or other) over 18 treads that could make a real difference.

We did save from birth and £60 a month returned > £25k which would be enough to top up and more for an undergraduate degree.

The problem with the current system is that you have no idea how much you will repay, yes you may never repay it all but you could pay significantly more that you borrowed because of what are really usurious interest rates.

I hate the argument that we shd view it as a graduate tax, the marginal rates that the graduates face are unfair. How many people here would be happy with 9% extra on their current income tax rates.

We don’t.

It was to hide youth unemployment and to destroy the existing class structure.

With an ageing population, kids will be able to earn better and younger. No need for a three year social.

What’s a 3 year social? My DDs worked pretty hard at their degrees. Plenty do and the skills they learnt were important for work. DD1 would not have her job with no degree.

I would agree some are superfluous. I do think uni expansion has been costly to parents and to society with student loan debt mounting up. Who is going to put the genie back in the bottle now? More should look at apprenticeships but only around 5000 18 year olds get onto degree apprenticeships each year and that’s an improvement over recent years. Most degree apprenticeships go to adults already employed.

@Dixiechickonhols There are few Unis where there’s no accommodation costing less than £9000 pa. That level of spending is £3000 above some uni accommodation. London is more but other unis do have cheaper accommodation. Of course it might mean sharing a bathroom (they do at home but can’t at uni?) and not having the most up to date rooms. However there seems to be a disconnect between loan and choosing a hall based on price. Why is there a huge surprise on costs? Again, do some homework.

Yes there’s some cheaper. But not many cheaper than minimum loan. Cheapest we’ve found this year (been to 8 open day accommodation talks) was £140 x 42 weeks so still more than min loan and shared bathroom.
London often has the highly rated courses for many subjects. It can’t be right that A star academic students at a state grammar can’t even contemplate LSE, UCL, Imperial. Out of 300 kids in dc’s year I think less than half a dozen have considered London.
We have saved and only have one DC so it’s not my teen affected.
The amount of parental contribution is a huge shock to many. Northern uni only, gap year or live at home and commute is very much pattern here and we are in affluent area with most kids in dual income households with parents in professional jobs. Lots have 2 DC with typical 2 yr spacing si two to support. My dc is yr 13 so I’m very aware of situation.

@Dixiechickonhols I have northern relatives who think the south is a different country! They don’t consider London or anything south of Nottingham but that’s not unusual for all sorts of reasons. More staying with who you like. Good alternatives like Durham are in the North! Oxbridge wasn’t London last time I looked.

I do recognise people get a shock but it shouldn’t be and min Liam won’t cover accommodation but any figure a few £ thousand above, will. Max loan for the worst off, definitely.

One thing I have noticed from sitting through all the accommodation talks are accommodation figures are often misleading. So from £120 on website but that’s for students in specific categories eg care leavers and extremely limited. With A level grades situation and lots going via clearing this year lots have found themselves in beggars can’t be choosers situation and it’s only the dearer accommodation left.

Slightly off topic but I’ve been horrified to discover that if you want to go into a number of careers such as banking or insurance an internship in your penultimate year at university is becoming almost essential. My son did one this summer and was paid £440 a week. We live 2 hours from London but were lucky that he could stay with my sister for the 4 weeks.

It would be very difficult to fund temporary accommodation in London and pay for transport, food etc on that sort of money and I find it amazing that students who live outside of London are being discriminated against in this way.

No it’s definitely the parental contribution stopping it.
Oxbridge popular and both open days well attended because accommodation is affordable and super short terms. My dc sent me a pic of prices on wall in college she stayed in as she couldn’t believe how much cheaper it was.
Durham is expensive and worry if you get allocated an expensive catered college (you can’t specify when apply via ucas)
Mine isn’t STEM but it’s a shame if a child who is can’t even contemplate the top unis for their course.

Those going on about how parents should have been planning for their DC to go to Uni are talking from a position of privilege. Yes £50 a month into an ISA will make a big difference, but not everyone has £50 guaranteed spare every single month.

And as I noted earlier salaries haven't gone up with the cost of living in recent years, Civil Servants for example have been on a pay freeze or reduced rises since the governments brought in austerity measures, and not all industries have kept up with inflation over the last couple of years. Then factor in the immense rises in prices over the past 2-3 years - parents who may well have had £6-8k a year spare they were planning on subsidising their DC's Uni education with are suddenly finding they need that to pay for their mortgages and household costs. In my case for example over the last 2.5 years, my mortgage interest alone on a reasonably small mortgage has gone up over £6k per year, my energy costs over £1k a year, my food costs around £1300 a year, my petrol costs (needed for commuting) at a guestimate over £1k a year. Add that up, we're talking up to £9-10k. Salary has gone up around £2k in that time. And that's just the basic absolute necessities. So income that I had been planning on spending on other things/saving has completely vanished.

Does anybody know when the threshold for parental income for Uni loans last went up, and how much by? Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can work out just how the thresholds have changed over say the last 10 years compared to costs?

You don't always get a choice. My sister got assigned the most expensive accommodation at her uni (en-suite, with a cleaner) despite putting the cheapest three as her three options from which they apparently assigned rooms. This was after she'd confirmed her place (nowhere near home) and short of dropping out completely there was nothing she could do but pay it.

York asks you to order 7 choices but you then get allocated one of those. There aren’t 7 cheap choices and lots are catered( and then only breakfast and dinner Monday to Friday!!)

York has a weekly college meal included in most self catering but plenty around £6-7000 mark. Not £9000 and they are definitely not all catered. It is not necessary to pay £9000. However students like the flashier halls and en suite and parents do not seem to say no and have chats about finance.

Everyone has had cost of living rises. Everyone. The reason parents are being asked to pay is to control state borrowing and financial liabilities. With student loans and those remaining unpaid, it’s massive. Being a student is not a right. It is a choice. Maybe student finance details should be given to new parents? Or be in the info pack when DC start school? It’s not going to improve due to sheer numbers going and the very expensive halls that have been built. So few willing to share facilities doesn’t help either.

The school a family member went to just a few years ago had no one go south of Nottingham. Not one. 1/3 to local 2 unis. They appear to want to stay with friendship groups. They won’t go anywhere else to work either. Plus there are some less expensive unis in the south. Not everyone goes to London but they don’t confer any advantage if you want to stay and work in the North.

But they are the ones entailed to the full loan. And frankly cost of living means we would still have students not being able to go, regardless if the money is a grant or loan.£9k doesn’t go anywhere in many cities irrespective of paying it back once you are earning.

As student of the early nighties I was absolutely broke. The grant went nowhere. The impoverished student was the reality then. Most students these days appear to be living quite well I think.

@TizerorFizz
So how to do we fund the huge expansion of uni education then? Who should pay? All those paying tax who didn’t go themselves? Or should we reduce uni participation?

Yet other European countries manage with similar levels of Uni participation but charge far far lower fees, Germany public Uni's free, France around 1000 euros.

Our kids are being scammed, thresholds frozen, super high interest rate payments and loan periods extended but as the OP says, treated as dependents in order to save money...

I think a max of £3k for per year would be more reasonable and a return to the mtce grant & loans at zero % interest, the UK needs a well educated work force plus they tend to earn more/pay more tax....

All of this is one reason my DD left the NHS and moved abroad.

What? Do you have a 50k loan to pay back? nope. You like me actually got paid to go to Uni...

plus v easy to get pt work,

Talk about pull the ladder up....

@Alexandra2001 We do not have this amount of money as a country! It’s that simple. Other countries do not have the NHS. They also have lots of private unis, eg France, USA and Italy. They are not all state operated. I’m glad your DC avoided their obligations. Well done. Everyone has a sliding scale of payments based on earnings. That’s fair!

What is most galling is the fact that we pay for accommodation for quite a lot of chunks of time when they are not actually there. DCs halls fees were from Sep to July but university was finished in May and she spent many weeks at home due to holidays, study time and don't get me started on the lecturers strike that's a whole other issue. This year's house rent started in August and again runs to July but university is from Oct-May. As accommodation is scarce students just have no choice. The whole thing is a scam.

Well, we do - it is a choice the government makes for English students. They have billions to waste where it helps their cronies!

Remember the ludicrous situation where EU students could study for free at Scottish Universities like Scottish students can but English kids had to pay?

York is collegiate so if you want a certain college, the accommodation is limited to certain types. No self catering at certain colleges for example. Durhum was the same.

Don't buy that, UK is still the 6th richest country in the world.. ahead of France and Italy.
Friends of mine DC's in France can easily study there for 1000 euros give or take, private Uni's are not common in France at all.

Plus France pays more per capita for health care than we do, all pay roll deducted ie tax.

Perhaps we piss money away? HS2, Cross Rail, numerous IT projects, Trident, PPE scandals... RAAC .. and don't tax unearned income as we should?

Either way, we need a highly educated work force, allowing only the wealthy to study is not a long term solution, grants available to the poorest students have been frozen year on year, way behind inflation.

No! its not fair.. friends of hers who stayed in NHS have seen the recent pay rise completely eaten up by the loan repayments and extra pension payments... they are approx £40 per month better off... wow!!!

..and my DD told the SLC where she was going, forwarding address, who she was working for... as per the rules.. 8 months in and so far has heard nothing from them.

... more waste.

No – you would then be considered an independent student (or at least this was the case a few years back). Other scenarios that conferred this status were things like 3 years of employment / financial independence. Don’t know if this has changed in recent years.