To think student funding is in crisis and yet another area this government just can’t be bothered to fix.

[Fr00tL00ps]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67206767

To get access to full loans your family needs to earn under £25k. In this climate many families above can’t afford to top up and fund now sky high rental fees and utilities as they’re paying for rises in their own. There is now a two tier uni experience with the children of those under £25k and richer families able to top up able to attend uni full time and eat.

Why is it ok for for young people to live in poverty just because they’re students ? Also why is parental income taken into account for an 18 year old at uni living away from home but not for an 18 year old living at home receiving Universal Credit?

Also, if I can work PT in retail whilst having FT university hours (9-5pm daily except Wednesday because that was uni sports time) you can.

With potentially the exception of medicine and nursing all university courses allow you work. If not term time (I know Oxford and Cambridge terms are shorter) then definitely in the summer to top up. At the end of the day it's choices.

Yes! Stop voting for them!!!

TrudyProud

Bull shit. Rent , mortgages, utilities, food etc now are nothing like 2005. It’s laughable you think they are.

Im not sure about £25k could be dismissed as middle class and actually your dismissal of middle class moaning is pretty much how this government get away with it.

Out of interest what retail jobs are there willing to employ a student who is in lectures 9-5? How are students supposed to do a challenging amount of course work, exams,9-5 lectures and work enough to raise several hundreds of pounds of short fall which is the reality now. There aren’t enough hours in the week.

Have labour said that they will revise student funding to make it fairer? I haven't seen anything about that - do you have a link? When do they say they would implement this policy, it is one of those first-to-do jobs or on the never-never to do list?

Or is the policy of one of those inconsequential parties?

Who? Labour introduced the fees…

@Fr00tL00ps you seem to have made your decisions re the topic you have posted so won't waste my time explaining further.

It may come as a shock to you but plenty of people work part time jobs (students included).

I don't know the parent earnings threshold specifics but my mum is an NHS nurse and couldn't afford to support me or my brother through university- that is my comparative.

You might be appalled/ shocked/disappointed with the government but this decline in public spending has been going on for a long time. I was giving my experience as someone who funded themselves through uni with loans and employment . Graduated during a global financial crisis, didn't have a room to go back to (despite being from and living in London) so paid market rent while paying back student loans etc and still in the 11years since graduating have done okay.

It's not been easy at all and would never say it is. I'm simply saying it's not a new phenomenon for most of us not to have parental support .

Call centres or supermarkets have plenty of weekend and evening hours. Fast food too. It’s not glamorous but needs must.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to students doing medicine, but the vast majority of students don’t actually study for 40hrs a week and come out with perfectly acceptable degrees. I was in seminars and lectures for 4hrs a week at one point. A lot of students don’t end up in jobs that pay well or need degree-level skills, and eighteen is old enough to weigh up the pros and cons of a degree.

And then libdems rode in to shared governance on the policy of cancelling tuition fees...and walked away with free school dinners for small children 🤷

Do you have dc at university atm?

Have they had a job so far? During A levels or now

when I went there was no funding i worked part time
why do people think that taxpayers should pay for their kids education

I have to agree with this. It's only because the middle classes are now affected suddenly it's an issue. It's been like this for ages.

I didn't get any help back in the day. I had to work throughout. There are plenty of options - live at home/study remotely/pick a course that pays your fees etc..

It's about choices. Uni isn't compulsory. There are many other routes into professions. You've never really needed a degree to be a solicitor for example.

Has that 25k threshold moved much over time? Its only just above full time minimum wage, so i feel its very unrealistic to expect someone on 26k to support themself and a student in a meaningful way.

I do understand most students work in A levels to save and also work at uni but i do think there is a whole student accommodation industry profiting of this. I know a developer who specifically develops accommodation blocks for thier investors. The nvestors arent worried about uni fees.

2005 everything was cheaper, the comparison is unfair especially considering there hasn't been much change to the £25k limit to account for inflation.

I was lucky, parents paid my rent and loans plus work covered the rest. Looking back now, I should have done more paid work and saved like hell!!

I'll be recommending my kids go straight into a job with prospects, unless they need a degree (eg doctor).

Ever since fees came in, the system has been set against middle income families. Rich - can afford it anyway. Poor - funded for you. Somewhere inbetween - your parents help if they can/want to, but there’s no guarantee so these students miss out/live in poverty. I also fail to see what parental income has to do with it at all. I thought that back in 1999 when I applied for a student loan and I still think it now. My parents’ signatures were on the paperwork and yet the loan was in my name. How is that even legal? And how is it legal to effectively make parents pay for their offspring to attend university well into their 20s? It makes no sense at all!

On that note - I had friends who declared themselves officially estranged from their parents and they got full loans. They weren’t but they had more money than I did with two working parents and younger siblings.

I’m pretty sure it’s 25k for maximum loans, with a sliding scale. So someone with a family earning 26k would receive very close to maximum loans.

I do agree it should be reviewed and rise, same as for things like the threshold for free school meals. And I do think the degree cost is outrageous. The previous system where students left with up to about 25k debt and actually, mostly, paid it off was far better.

The COL crisis has been focussed around the last few years. Parents should be focusing on saving for their children’s needs from birth (or before) so they have money for this sort of thing. The more marginal your finances are, the more you must save ahead of time. Obviously, not people with disabilities or the very poorly paid - but the parents who say they can’t afford to help their children now. I’m surprised nobody has launched a special savings plan.

The student costs were brought in (erroneously in my view) so that the poorer people in society didn’t pay for richer peoples enhanced education. At that point ALL parents that could should have started making provision.

the poor and well off are still ok. The people in the middle need to save before time.

It's very difficult. We helped our eldest child through Uni as his loan barely covered his accomodation. He did have a part time job but due to the nature of his course ( sports journalism) and needing to do a lot of voluntary work etc for the work experience he was limited in how many hours he could work. We did this whilst also having two other dependent teenagers at home to support but if I remember rightly they don't seem to consider that when awarding finance !! Eldest ds also spent a year of that degree living at home due to covid and there's been no kind of way of course of getting any of the rent back that he paid in a far away town during that time or compensations for the face to face Uni experience he never had. We now are faced with a bit of a nightmare situation of having the youngest two at Uni together for the full 3 years. They have both tried to get part time jobs but not been successful. They have got slightly more maintenance loan because there are two of them at UNi but the loan again only just covers rent with about £500 for the year left over to live on so we are having to help. We are lucky we don't have a mortgage any more, I have no idea how we would cope if we did. me and dh have worked for 40 years + but no hope of retiring any time soon !

It is also frustrating when the kids friends who are from single parent families with low earning resident parents get full loan, whilst mostly having dad's who are much higher earners who they don't officially live with but have support from. My ds's girlfriend lived with her single parent mum who has never worked and got full maintenance loan. Her dad pretty wealthy with a million pounds turnover company yet this is not taken into account at all !

We are one of the world's richest countries. We are not broke. The government just refuse to fund anything that benefits the population properly. If we did, then women wouldn't be priced out of work due to high childcare costs, staff wouldn't be leaving Teaching & the NHS due to stress, we wouldn't have to import specialists from abroad because we would have taught our own and we would have a healthier population if we properly funded the NHS and public transport instead of loosing people too early from the workforce due to ill health and inability to get to jobs, but no they would rather waste money right left and centre and just make themselves richer at the expense of everyone else.

So what would you like the Government to do OP, and how do you think it should be funded?

Who’s up for paying more in taxes? I take it you are but I’m not sure about others

Even the max maintenance loan doesn't cover some university accommodation costs, particularly in second and third years with private renting. But I also notice a reluctance for some students to work in the long breaks - so many are going on this or that holiday (however funded) and not working to top up themselves. Many don't work in the very long summer between A levels and starting university, with the reason given they 'need a break'. But don't then complain of not having enough during the coming year.
Fees here are comparatively low and the loan covers them. Rentals are high. I do think CB should continue while in full time further and higher education. And I agree the maintenance loan should not be means tested. But I think a few more students could get earning to help fund themselves (im well aware many do and also work part time even in term time, but so many don't or only work part time during the summer break). Or take a gap year and live at home and work and save if need be. Or if possible go to a more local uni - sure not the 'uni experience' but if that's the only way it is affordable then that's how it is!
I know some will say 'we live rurally no jobs' or can't work due to disability but that is a minority.

Yes exactly. Like a pp says there are so many different things that need fixing - massive costs like the NHS, education, social care funding as well as student finance. People don't seem to want to pay for anything, they want everything funded and it just isn't possible. At the same time they want benefits to rise, old people's care to be funded, free school meals for all, good state pension for possibly 25-30 years after state retirement age. There are not enough working people to pay for it !

My two youngest kids spent the whole holidays looking for part time jobs and were not successful. They ended up working in charity shops voluntarily.