Student loans not rising to manage rents increasing

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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?

Why is he going home in the holidays? Most students i know live in uni town full time, get an evening or weekend job.

It is what it is, if he needs more money, he needs to get a job

The government isn't doing anything because they do not care. Actually they do care, most of them are private landlords so are benefitting from rising rents.

All his friends from school come home to be fed and live in a warm house. All the Facebook groups talk about kids going home so not sure what students you know.

He is living in a shitty, tiny,damp, moldy terraced house on a main road in a shit area. It is cheap and the student loan does not cover it.

The students who have problems are those who don't qualify for a full loan but have parents who won't make the expected parental contribution. But that lies with the parents not the government. Top ups can be a lot of money, but they're means tested and we've all known about the need for parental top up since before our now Uni aged children were born, so there's been plenty of time to factor it in to decision making and financial planning.

The majority of people aren’t in a secure enough position to know what will be happening for them in 18+ years though, just as most people aren’t in a position to plan their entire lives around their child possibly going to uni. That’s just not how life works.

If you’re a single parents with multiple children and rent to pay in an expensive area then you might earn enough that your child gets the minimum loan, but not enough to top them up to the maximum loan yourself.

Contract in halls 44 weeks, so they had to come home. Free bed and board a job waiting for them whenever they returned. A no brainer to come home.

Damn I wish I'd invested in Unite back in 1999.

He has used his work savings and can’t work during term time.There is no point saying he has to he can’t. His course is intensive, full time and he has to put in extra hours due to his ND.

Yes I agree it’s clear the government don’t care and many Tories profit from it. They don’t care about anything other than sorting their mates. Its so sad that we live in a country that has nothing to be proud of. It’s just such a shit show.

But it's not meant to be covered by "the student loan" unless he is entitled to the maximum loan (which would cover it). It's meant to be covered by the student loan PLUS the means tested parental contribution which will bring him up to approx £10k p a and will cover it plus essential living costs.

Unite are doing very well out of students 🙄

Yanbu OP, rent and general cost of living is completely out of synch with the loans. We've been lucky so far in that DD is at uni in a relatively cheap location but the rent some of her friends are paying (eg Bristol) is just unbelievable. DS will be going this year all being well and has his eye on Imperial. Unfortunately London costs will be completely beyond us so that course is out of reach for him.

Its all very well pp saying 'get a job' but it's not always that easy especially on the more demanding effectively full time courses. I agree the government has to look at upping the loans or young people from middle income families will be priced out of uni.

The full loan isn't enough in many university cities now though.

What the government loan to students needs to increase as costs of living have gone up so it doesn’t cover what it did before. The world and his wife know that. They are either dim, incompetent or don’t care.

But as everyone has said, most degrees are intensive and full time, we all still have to work throughout if we want to be able to live away from home. If you don’t want to work alongside study then you live at home.

If the reason he can’t work is due to ND, then he needs an official diagnosis at which point there is extra financial support to assist- PIP, DLA, bursaries with uni even maybe.

OP while I fully agree with you, complaining on here won't make a difference.

In the short term, your DS is going to have to get a job. It's shit and it might affect his final grade, but if he can't afford rent and food, needs must!

Perhaps he defers a year so he can work and save?

No the government needs to get its arse out of the ground and up loans that cover costs of living to new costs of living levels.

It’s not hard to comprehend.

Is it still a government loan? I thought it had been privatised. There's a huge call centre here that friends son went for a job at. It was commission driven so he declined.

I agree, it's totally shite. £25k household for a maximum loan? What a joke.

What we are going to have to do is
a separate issue. At the end of the day student finance is yet another area being mis managed by this government. The level of incompetence is incredible.

My DB wasn't allowed to work during his degree. If was found to have a job they would have kicked him off the course.

So you’d be happy I presume then for your take home pay to decrease, as tax increases, in order to fund this increase to the loan?

You think everybody would be happy to pay more in taxes for that reason?

This is all government money, the only people who will end up picking up the bill is the tax payer.

What a lot of clueless people on this thread. You're right to raise this OP. Bring back maintenance grants. We have one of the most expensive systems in Europe and didn't before we started copying the US and adopting the loan model.

But if they upped the loan amount, then the gap between means tested loan and maximum loan would be larger, and your expected parental contribution would go up! You'd be expected to give MORE money to your son, not less!

This, with bells on. But I can't afford bells as I'm having to top my son's loan up so he can pay his rent. And yes, he does work and it's still not enough.

This is another thing that's broken in this country, and it gives me the fucking rage.

My son has to look for accommodation for year 2. Sharing with 5 friends. The bill packages for 6 is around 150 a month for water, electric, wifi. Doesn't even include council tax. For 6? That's each? 900 a month? We have a 5 bed and running costs nowhere near that.

If they’re all full time students they won’t pay council tax.

Not saying it isn’t a rip off, but they won’t have to budget for that at least.