Student loans not rising to manage rents increasing

[B00kmark6525]

What are families supposed to do?

£400 rent shortfall this term when we’re already having to pay £300 a month so he can eat. It’s a grotty tiny terraced shit heap with mold up the walls. The loans don’t cover living expenses, now they’re not covering rent.

We have 2 other children. What do they expect families to do?

I’m with you OP. You’ll have posters on here moaning about students spending all their money on going out, saying that when they were students they managed , blah, blah, blah. They haven’t got a clue.
Rents are the single biggest expense(student landlords are disappearing from the PRS) and when I was a student in the 90s rents were much, much more affordable.
There is a cost of living crisis that affects everyone, including students. Food, transport etc is much more unaffordable. Parents are struggling to support their kids, especially if you have more than one studying at the same time.
More and more students are working during the week, during term time, not just on the weekend or during the holidays.
Some skipping lectures to work just to survive and as you can imagine this is having a detrimental effect on their studies.
All this could be resolved by increasing the maintenance loan, but this government doesn’t give a shit.
Going to university will soon be an avenue that’s only open to the wealthy.

Our son’s rent this year is £500pcm and that’s in a house with 4 others paying the same! It isn’t the nicest either…..Then there are bills to pay.
He only qualifies for the bare minimum grant as we apparently earn too much!
He is 21 this year as well and also working 20hrs a week to help ends meet on top of his uni studies.
It makes me so mad that our earnings are used to determine what an adult is entitled to borrow towards HIS uni course and living.
these allowances need amending

But rents and cost of living have shot up so it’s not comparable.

His bus pass he had to pay was eye watering for a really short journey. Hundreds.

Also had to no pay £££ for dentistry over the hols because that’s another thing the gov don’t give a shit about. They’re so bloody crap.

I feel your pain. We have 2 at Uni, the loans only just cover rent. They have both tried hard to get jobs but no success. i don't think it's a s easy to get jobs as people think when you are only in a town half the year.

Parents are supposed to top up means tested loan amount to the equivalent of maximum loan which is just shy of £10K. Are you saying that he can't survive on this?

£300 is higher end of spends per month for most students, I think, and definitely could be cut back. And remember he only needs spends for the term time - you can feed and water him back home in the holiday (plus he could work full time over the summer to build up some savings).

I'll be honest, we top DC up from minimum loan to maximum amount, she's in a relatively expensive Southern town, and she's managing fine on that this year in halls. The accommodation she's secured for next year is marginally cheaper than halls, but she'll have to pay utilities on top, so will work out slightly more overall, but will still be very manageable on the max loan amount. £10k (outside of London) might not offer a luxurious lifestyle, but I really think it is enough to cover all needs during the term time (and summer holiday working can give extra cash for luxuries like holidays/take outs/new tech etc.)

I agree rent are ridiculously high and even the full loan doesn't cover it. I think students on a minimum loan are probably going to need about another 6,000 from parents even if they do get a job which as you say is not always possible. DD is 23 years old but still her loan is based on our earnings and her course is far too full on to get a job in term time.

Same. I worked 2 nights a week in a nightclub during term time (majority of other bar staff were also students) and then working 3 part time jobs during holidays (including Christmas when I even worked Christmas Day). It was the only way I could afford to cover bills as a student.

Warehouse work pays really well and you can do it weekly.

DS2 is in London, £590 pm each, three sharing.

Going up to £650 each in Sept if they stayed.

My dd got on spareroom.com and did a flatshare from that for £100 per week i thought that was quite reasonable.

Has he filled in a HC1 form to see if he can get help?

Unless he's doing a course such as nursing/teaching where he's actively working as part of his course so no free time the unfortunately he will need to get a part time job in evenings or weekend.

Full time course does not mean 40 hours a week. That's not to take away from the point of your thread it is atrocious but its been the norm for students to have to work for over a decade now.

Ds is in uni 5 days a week (engineering) and works weekends and holidays (occasionally mid week if free) to help support himself. He has enough left over to afford a decent social life and a holiday abroad with friends. He easily earns/saves £2k during summer holidays.

Also it's a LOAN. So there is no reason why it can't be more

Which most don't pay back, so give more then an even bigger tax payer bill.

You can't do that for a lot of courses though and they don't get higher loans.

£300 for food, bills, travel in and out two/ three times a day, books etc. He is a frugal lad and spends most of his time studying. Less than £300 is just unrealistic.

If his course is full time and he has work every evening and weekend,when is he supposed to work in a job?? What will accommodate him going home in the hols? He tried and they’re all chasing the same jobs that accommodate this.

My DC is on an intensive course in London. We’re in Wales so he can borrow the full amount and still we top up a lot.

He says all the non-Welsh kids on his course are properly rich. The ones that aren’t have academic parents.

The way that privilege replicates itself on this country is mind blowing.

yes we give our ds £300 a month to live off. He barely socialises, travels on the trian ( railcard ) to see his gf a couple of times a month.

Solidarity @B00kmark6525 it’s a shite system and I agree it’s really hard.

DS pays £190 a week for a room in a shared house in Exeter. Bills are on top so he pays just over £10,000 a year excluding food, travel, clothing, books.
He gets the max maintenance loan of £4600 but that still leaves a deficit of about £7,000 a year.
He is expected to do internships at Easter and or Summer of at least a month each time. He manages to work a part time job 2 nights a week but it a major expense. His peers that went to London for Uni appear to having similar housing costs yet get nearly £2k more loan than him!

When did we become such a shitty country that nobody cares how much we’re levelling down?

I went to uni 15 years ago and the max loan I could get was pretty small, 1.5k a year if I remember rightly (Scotland, means-tested but my parents weren't high earners and their salaries needed to cover their mortgage. Four years later it had been reviewed and my sister was entitled to 5k with same parental income). I couldn't afford to go away for uni and pay for halls, so I stayed at home and commuted. Was it disappointing? Yes. But that's life. You (and your son) need to make choices that work for your circumstances, and not blame the government for not paying for it.

Edit - also did an intensive course (in every day Monday to Friday, 9-5 most days) and worked 8 hours a week on a Saturday

I'm wondering which course has lectures 9pm-2am as that's when I was working during term time. Needs must. Bills have to be paid and at that age, you can manage without 8 hours sleep a night.