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?

Even in the days before fees, maintenance grants were means tested against parental income

Now with loans, everyone gets full loan for fees, and then maintenance loans are means tested against parental income.

What has changed is the number of students, many the first to attend university from their family, who just weren't aware that parents are expected to contribute, at least to top up to equivalent of maximum loan

I think this needs to be much better publicised, same for the government's scope to change T&Cs eg alter/freeze threshold at which repayments begin or change interest rates.

I doubt we can afford to be more generous (by abolishing parental contribution) - it couldn't be afforded when the system was set up under Blair/Brown

I know. I had no help either. I had to work throughout.

It's not prejudice to recognise those from wealthy backgrounds have it easier. It's just fact.

They clearly don't have it easier if they are only entitled to the minimum loan and their parents refuse to make a contribution.

Exactly

Of course parents don’t need to save from birth, unless they’re choosing to and have a burning desire to finance it all.

Tuition costs are fully covered by loans, accommodation almost always is (all students are eligible for a minimum loan of £3698 even if living at home with billionaire parents - I’m guessing this is fairly equivalent to an 18 year old on UC living at home?), bills would be low in shared accommodation with no council tax, most parents can save for a few years beforehand or arrange their finances so they can afford to donate a few hundred quid a month and students can live frugally, use their overdrafts and get a job (during university, in holidays or beforehand in a gap year) to make up the shortfall, just like they have for generations.

If the government puts more money into education I’d rather it went to schools, who are desperately underfunded, or funding early years, for which we have one of the most expensive systems in the world, than to 18 year olds who don’t want to get a part-time job. Increasing loans is not the answer when we have a system which means the vast majority won’t pay it back.

If anyone’s reading this with a child in sixth form, I’d strongly urge them to research degree apprenticeships. Most the apprentices I come across are middle class, probably because their parents have more knowledge of the scheme. They enter the job market miles ahead of regular graduates in pretty much every way.

Exactly this. The other ridiculous thing is that

“If your parents are separated or divorced, we'll use the income of whichever parent you're financially dependent on, including the income of your parent's partner, if they have one. This means we will not need income details from the parent that you're not dependent on or have less contact with” (gov website)

So you could have one very high earning parent with lots of spare cash to give you, but if you live with and are dependant on a low income parent, you can get a full loan.

A lot of uni courses are a complete waste of time anyway.

People should be encouraged to get value for money, the problem is the "must go to university if possible" mindset is taking a long time to die. It was appropriate for the 1980s and 1990s but not so now.

I think its better to go out, get a job, think about what you really want to do for a couple of years before going straight to uni and incurring a massive debt for a course in a subject you are never going to pursue, or will never be any use to you.

I swear when my friend was in uni about 10 years ago it was £25k then too. Surely that threshold should increase to match inflation?

Tuition costs are fully covered by loans, accommodation almost always is (all students are eligible for a minimum loan of £3698 even if living at home with billionaire parents - I’m guessing this is fairly equivalent to an 18 year old on UC living at home?), bills would be low in shared accommodation with no council tax, most parents can save for a few years beforehand or arrange their finances so they can afford to donate a few hundred quid a month and students can live frugally, use their overdrafts and get a job (during university, in holidays or beforehand in a gap year) to make up the shortfall, just like they have for generations.

@CanvaQueen if you read the BBCNews article the average annual student rent in England is £7,566 which means parents would have to top up your quoted figure of £3,698 by £3868 per year (£322/month) just for accommodation alone. Living costs on top of this likely to be another £500 per month minimum term time if they are to eat and have basic essentials. You can't assume that all DC can work part-time. Medicine students for example generally can't work due to workload, placements, shifts etc. and they barely have any holidays after the first couple of years. Degree apprenticeships aren't an option for those types of degrees.

I think they should decouple loans from parental income BUT remove the earnings floor so the loan is repayable whatever you earn after Uni. Fees ( and some living costs) for certain degrees such as medicine, nursing, teaching etc ( gov can decide high need sectors) are government funded and fees not repayable if the graduate works in the state sector for 15 years after graduation ( fees repayable on sliding scale if they don’t). They may also choose to subsidise skills shortage areas such as engineering and those people can work in private sector in UK after graduation.

I think that would focus minds on whether the degree is actually worth doing. I imagine a lot of people would decide it’s not and look for work experience routes instead. Fewer graduates means companies need to start actually training young people again.

That's fair enough for those courses but plenty of courses are not doing those kind of hours.
I did agency work through the holidays in jobs that were so grim it hadn't occurred to me they existed. During term time i had more than one bar job and a weekend job. I'm surprised at the amount of students that are saying they can't get a job. It may not be a regular job but there are jobs out there. Most unis are in cities. Most hospitality jobs in those cities are staffed by students. Many weekend shop jobs are staffed by students

GasPanic · Today 12:28
A lot of uni courses are a complete waste of time anyway.

People should be encouraged to get value for money, the problem is the "must go to university if possible" mindset is taking a long time to die. It was appropriate for the 1980s and 1990s but not so now.

I agree entirely. I begged my dc not to go to university as neither was interested in academic work but they insisted and the one argument I couldn’t refute was that so many jobs won’t consider applicants without a degree.
What a waste of money, though they did enjoy themselves so I suppose that’s something.

Think it's a load of shit that it's based on "family income" to begin with, when it's a loan. I have twins, if/when they come to go to uni, if I'm still earning the same or better and nothing has changed with how student loans are done, then I'm supposed to be in a position to top up two peoples maintenance loans, when in reality I'm not that well off after everything has been paid out (especially if cost of living continues to outpace any pay rises). Just done a calculation, apparently they'd lose £4.5k of maintenance loan each, I don't know many families, even those earning decently that can just soak up a loss of £9k from their finances, it's a loan that's accruing interest, not a grant that never has to be repaid, the people you've lived with up until that point and their earnings should have no bearing on a loan that someone else is taking out, it's as absurd as a mortgage provider needing your parents financials before they give you a mortgage, or a car finance company needing them too.

The loans should have a maximum amount (which even now I think the maximum amount is too low), that all students could select how much or how little they want to borrow, but they should be on the hook for them until they've paid them back, no writing them off after so many years.

The flip side is unis say that the current level of home student fees, barely changed for 10 years and inflation has well inflated the costs for universities, does not cover the cost of many courses. The answer for universities is to increase the proportion of international fee payers, as has been quite evident at some universities.

It certainly has. Anecdotally I know, but, one of my DDs friendship group is almost entirely foreign students (mainly Malaysian, not sure why, maybe the course 🤷‍♀️) their parents are all well able to fund their course to the eye watering level required and obviously fund their living expenses. She is stunned by the amount of them who are not bothering to turn up to seminars and even lectures and partying hard and generally having a crazy time whilst their parents pay through the nose. Up to them obviously, but it will rapidly become the preserve of the rich at this rate.

I read an anaylsis, I which I had kept the link, that calculated that for some universities, the only way to keep fee income in line with their increase in costs, they will need to increase by 50% the number of international students over the next year or two.

Interested that there is a course full of Malaysians, there are not that many who come to the UK to study.

Sadly I had to make clear that we as a family could not support DD at university.
Even though we earn above the threshold for a full loan. Supporting her to the extent that government is expecting us would have a huge impact on our other DC & lifestyle. I can't justify for all of us living on bare minimum, giving up hobbies ect to support one DC.

So we encouraged DC to take a year out. Work in the field she wanted to study and save, save save! She's done it. She worked hard and saved 2/3 of her wages. We gave her a top up from our savings.
So she's now got enough money to see her through 3 years of uni. (She can't work during term time as her course is very intense.)

I think it's important to have THE conversation when DC start thinking about A levels and university. Talk about the debt they will have by the end of 3-5 years of study. Look at alternative options for a similar career.
Be realistic about the amount you are able/ willing to support them. Then do the maths with them. Help and support them, and let them know that university isn't the holy grail it's made out to be.

Once they decide to go to uni, do the maths again and again! DD'S course was chosen based on course structure and living costs.

@EasternStandard you might want to check the year on that video you keep referencing. Plan 5 has hugely shifted to goalposts. Repayment term moved from 30 to 40 years, salary for starting repayments lowered. The Institute for Fiscal Studies have a fairly detailed report and analysis on its implications.

It was shown to Ds at school last year 🤷‍♂️

It’s as up to date as they had

If ML needs to make a new one so be it

As for the for the income threshold for the max maintenance loan that has not changed since 2008. Linking to rises in average earnings it would have been around 34k in 2022, and more again now.

An 18 year old living at home claiming UC would be paying most of their UC towards their food and household bills.

It's always been like this - I went in 1991 and the grant was means tested to zero, I got a full grant, my younger brother got zero (finances had improved a lot at my parents house by then) so they were expected to fully find him minus the student loan then £900 a year (so they had to give him £2k a year, more than expected now i should add)

And many of you are confusing tuition fees and maintenance loans - the former are e fully funded by loans for everyone, the latter is means tested

Fixed how exactly? Are you proposing we should pay students to go to university? No fees, No living costs? Free accommodation? As that is just not affordable or sustainable. This started with Tony Blair pushing that more people should go to Uni when for many they really don't need to, I know so many people that are doing jobs after degrees they really don't need those degrees for and they could have done without and saved themselves a whole lot of cash. You should really only go to Uni because you have to for your chosen career path or because you have a real passion, and you are bright and self-sufficient enough to cope with the rigors of study, not to fill time as you don't know what else to do or because you feel you have to. If there were fewer people going there would be more money available. I agree that the loan structure is not terribly fair and could be better managed. I would also fully fund any NHS degrees providing the recipients sign up to stay in the NHS for 10 years post-graduation.

@gotomomo how is £2k per annum more than expected now?