to think that £500 a month is enough for a child at uni

[FunnysInLaJardin]

we will pay his accommodation and his tuition fees will be paid, so this will just be for food and travel etc

@TeenLifeMum everyone is entitled to the minimum maintenance Loan of around £4.5k it just can be as much as £9k of you are a lower earner
very few people would be able to pay their kids accommodation and spending money

I think it would be difficult for many, but it is what parents were expected to do in the past back in the day of grants. The income cut off back then was something like £35k or £40k.

That's more than enough. I shop in Waitrose and spend about this a month on food and petrol for my entire family. Is he studying in Geneva!

The £500 a month, isn't just for food though so I don't think thats a fair comparison!
DD budgets £100 a week - there's travel to and from Uni (£20 a week) Gym / sports clubs pass(£5), society memberships,(£1) phone bill (£20), consumables like paper, pens, socks, replacing a missing phone charger! (£5). Then food (£30) and 2 modest evenings out (£20) - thats it gone.

We haven't mentioned clothes, travel home, room insurance, tech so if OP is including that too, I can see how £500 a month is soon used up.

Yes, it's funny how people assume students just need money for food as if there are no other costs involved with studying and living.

@ChocoChocoLatte @DungareesAndTrombones You have given me so much comfort. This will be DD in September, I have no way of supporting her bar the occasional grocery shop and top up but she'll get minimum loan of £4.5k and she's going to have to work for the rest.

I hope she has applied to places with cheap accommodation then. Not all universities have it and if the halls are privately owned it will be impossible without a parental contribution.

Just curious what courses make it difficult for students to work? I actually don't know anyone who didn't work while at uni and this includes people who studied medicine, the sciences etc.

My DC does medicine. Nobody on her course has a job during term time. Even on other courses few people have jobs. There aren't that many jobs around and if you work in the evening you then have to pay for taxis home (if you are female anyway) which eats into earnings.

@wombat15 Halls are £7.5k

Students on courses like medicine, nursing, dentistry and vet med are already working pretty much full time in their later years, in hospitals and clinics.

Some spend all week away on placements several hours away from the university.

Then they have to come home and study in the evenings and weekends . And of course do their housework and shopping etc just like everyone else.

They usually get about 6 weeks off during the summer, so it’s impossible to get a summer job as employers usually take on students who are working at weekends all year round and can do 3 months or more in the summer.

So it’s nothing like your average arts / science student with 6 hours of lectures/ tutorials and a couple of labs a week.

So the loan won't anywhere near cover her accommodation. She will have to find another 3K for that plus living costs. Unless her course involves little work she will find life very difficult.

I agree, it will be very difficult for her. Can she get cheaper halls?

No, there are no cheaper halls. Her course is 30% in university.

The system depends on parents making up the minimum loan to the maximum loan
If that is not done it will be extremely difficult for the student

So if you can’t give her anything and she needs £3,000 for her first year rent top up plus her first year living costs which at a minimum are going to be about £3000 on top, how is she going to be able to afford it? Does she have £6,000? She will also need money for a rent deposit in year 2 and will probably need this by Christmas of year 1.

It’s probably important that your DD knows this asap since unless she’s been saving she might have to apply for a deferral and she needs to do this sooner rather than later. Not all universities or courses allow deferral.

She has chosen an expensive uni then if there is nothing cheaper than that.
She will be expected to do self study in addition to her lectures and seminars. I think it's a good idea for students to get a job but not to do too many hours that will impact on their studies.

My daughter gets the minimum maintenance which doesn't quite cover her rent so we top that up. She works full time in the holidays to make enough to cover all other outgoings - she definitely survives ok on £500 a month. She certainly has to be careful but she goes out once or twice a week, eats well, does laundry plus other bits and bobs on that amount.

To be fair, around 7k is pretty standard for accommodation in many universities now. It isn't just the ones in cities you would expect to be expensive. Some of the older universities may have some "budget accommodation" but not all universities even own their own halls of residence and the halls are all actually owned by private companies and can be expensive. IQ accommodation in Brighton seems particularly expensive but even in other cities it will often be around 8.5k.

Are you giving her 500 pounds or is that what she earns?

We didn't give ours anything.
They went to a local university so they continued to live at home and they had part time jobs.
They didn't have student loans either, we wouldn't allow it, so they left university debt free.
The youngest had ideas about going to a university further away until he realised how much it would cost him, so he decided to stay put and go to a local university too.

Did you pay their tuition?

No. We found a way round it.

More than enough, DD has £250 per month from us, student loan and earnings from her holiday job and she manages really well, even paying her own rent