To be jealous of rich students

[Beupstairsreadymyangel]

When I went to uni, student grants had just been abolished.

my parents were completely skint: so I worked 30 hours a week while at uni, and paid rent to my parents.

right through my last year at school I worked around 20 hours a week (didn’t do 6th year) and worked every single day through the holidays except one (I remember taking that day off and my mum being annoyed because I wasn’t earning; meanwhile she hadn’t worked for about 18 years)

in my class at uni, most of the other students had their accommodation and food etc paid for by their parents: and they didn’t have to commute an hour each way to uni, and work almost full time.

in the end, I dropped out of uni and got a job. (I earn a decent amount now)

i now live in a uni town where there are lots of well off students: and my gosh. I feel resentful of them living in their expensive flats and sitting in coffee shops on their laptops.

i know im being so ridiculous!! And when my daughter is older I’ll want to do the same for her.

I don’t think it would go down well if I’m honest. She is quite fragile now. And I don’t think it would make any difference

You’re right. There are lots of kids worse off

Would studying at Open University and finishing your degree help you resolve your feelings?
Or channel your feelings into saving for your DC’s future.

" I feel resentful of them living in their expensive flats and sitting in coffee shops on their laptops"

Why? You are going back decades now and things change. Life moves on. And to feel resentful of this, all these years later is very odd indeed.

That sounds hard! I hope you ended up succesful!

Channeling the money into saving for DDs uni experience would be the best thing for me!

I am the mother of a rich student, she is having a Spa day today. She works over twenty hours a week and takes next to nothing from us.
It is pointless to envy anyone, doubly pointless when you have no idea what their real life situations are.

I think that’s probably the most worrying thing: that unless your parents help out: life will be a struggle financially: it’s much harder these days to catch up.

You say your parents were skint, was that genuine i.e. they had mortgage/rent to pay or were they pissing your dad's wages up the wall? Did they not receive benefits?

When I went to university, my widow mum was on a pittance of widow's pension but at least it meant I was means tested and didn't pay tuition fees. The council tax was also reduced due to me being a student. My student loan was entirely for myself. I used some of it on my mum but she never asked or expected any of it. I started contributing £250 and paid the phone bill and TV license when I got my first job after university.

Your parents did a right number on you. I hope they don't expect any financial assistance now?

I totally understand. My other half had scumbag parents who said the youngest had to stay at home and care for the parents. He did A Levels in secret while working and then ran away to Oxford and is now a very happy and successful man. The only reason he was able to do that is because it was in the 80s, under MT and he got everything for free ,he went in equal to the next person, they all had grants, some had rich parents and more money sure bit there was a leveller that was the system. He physically would have no chance now. And thank god they are long gone but they disowned him the day he became an doctor and said he had let the family down, horrible old cats.

I think you were very badly let down by your parents. Why didn’t your DM work?

If you came from a low income family and commuted to a nearby Uni they should’ve let you keep the loan, bar a small amount for bed and board, so you could exist on that while studying.

How were the tuition fees paid?

I haven't had any help from parents in terms of cash handout or anything, like you I worked since I was 15 and never had a penny since then, but I was lucky to be able to live at home well into my 20s and save for a deposit for a house in London. I won't inherit anything from my parents as sibling has tricked parents into giving the house solely to him.

I get really annoyed when people post threads angry that their friends are getting money towards a house deposit because I just think that's life, some of us are born rich, some are poor.

And then I read posts like yours, effectively homeless and on your own 17, and I think I was privileged to be able to live at home for so long, for a modest sum of £250pm.

Parents don't HAVE to help. Having shitty parents should no more hold you back than their ethnicity or gender. It's not bloody Matilda, it's 2024 in the UK, a highly rich and privileged country. Education IS a privilege in my opinion, most cultures revere and rely on it but that isn't something that only middle class kids whose parents are relatively functional should benefit from. I totally understand why the OP feels this way, it's not against the students, it's just sadness that shitty lives are so much harder, just to keep up with the more fortunate people let alone excel.

The full loan at that time covered halls with living money to spare. It was designed to.

The "living at home" loan wouldn't pay for halls, but if you moved out, you would have been entitled to the higher "living away from home" loan which did. Nowadays, due to the increased property prices, it doesn't cover in one or two very expensive cities (Bristol for e.g.), but this is a recent thing, historically full "living away" loan made it affordable in halls for any uni of your choice.

The only issue might be if you were not entitled to a full loan, due to your parents higher earnings, in which case it was on your parents to top you up, and on them if they failed to do so. But since you describe them as "skint", this seems unlikely.

The sensible choice, if you wanted to go to Uni, would have been to apply for the "living away" maintenance loan, and lived away from home - generally first year in halls, then in rented accommodation with your uni friends! Then, like most students, you could have a part time or holiday job to top you up with extra spending money if you wanted to.

If you didn't want to borrow the larger "living away" amount and have higher debt, then obviously that was your, perfectly valid, choice. And maybe the right one, since you seem to have done alright in life without the degree and associated debt. But you need to own the fact that you made your choice to live at home with the smaller loan and to give that loan to your mum, which ultimately made your uni life harder than it needed to be.

The majority of students have access to the equivalent of the full loan amount (either by loan or parental top up) and work a little for extra spends. With access to a full loan there was nothing stopping you doing the same. Students who are fully bankrolled by parents to more than the full loan amount do exist, but they are very much in the minority and not the norm at all. Most student would be in the same situation as you could have been.

When did you go to uni? When I went it was a mix of grants and loans. My best friend came from a fairly poor family so her loan was topped up with a maintenance grant as well as a grant/bursary from the university. Despite my parents paying for my accommodation and me using my loan as spending money she actually ended up with more money than me.

It sounds like your parents totally took e plouted you and had you gone it alone you might have actually not needed to work so much.

Life isn't fair and that is baked in. It's never going to be when the biggest outcomes in life are forged by the resources, capability, luck and generosity of your parents. It's just how it is, you can only play the cards you have.

You made a mistake with your checking I'm afraid, or you didn't apply for the correct loan or you weren't entitled to the full loan based on parental income.

Back in the late 90s/early 2000s (which is I assume when you mean) the full loan universally comfortably covered halls and living expenses. Not maybe holidays/smoking/partying - but that's what weekend and holiday jobs were for!

Sadly loans have not kept up with inflation, and accommodation costs have soared well above inflation, so that isn't the case now in some of the more expensive cities (but is still the case in many of the cheaper ones).

The loan that I go didn’t cover halls: I had checked.

The loans that they get now don't cover halls either, or rarely. But poorer students get higher loans and burseries, and usually a job, in order to manage it. Was that not the case back then?

This can easily turn into 'there's always someone worse off than you', and it's true there is. You have the power now to do what you want, you are an adult and you make your own choices, put the past aside and be thankful for what you have achieved, not what you haven't or what 'could have' under different circumstances.

I went to uni in 2003 and the full loan (if I’d got it) would have covered halls plus tuition fees. My fees were approx £1100 per year and halls approx £2500. IIRC full loan was £4k ish (I got £3k).

Loads of my friends with parents on low incomes got hardship grants back then, too.

I studied photography at uni and I was so resentful of the other students. Firstly, the rich people get to focus purely on their studies whilst the ‘poor’ have to get a job and balance work and studying often equating poorer grades.

Also, as I studied photography - all of the students who succeeded after graduation were those who came from rich parents. They had the ‘connections’, they had the money for equipment and most importantly they had the money to fund themselves to either start up a business or just generally with self employment. It’s gutting because most of us with actual talent were the ones who couldn’t fund a career in the arts because creative subjects and jobs enable only the rich to succeed.

one memory sticks with me where all people on my course were in the same photography shop printing out our portraits for the following day. I was counting out my last few quid to print mine out, whilst the rich people were dropping thousands on a new lens at the same time.

I don’t know about that, in my mind that’s confirmation bias but not objectively true. Anecdotally I worked all holidays whilst attending uni but not term time, my DH was the same, we work hard now and both have a good work ethic. However, my brother who is considerably more successful than me, works in law in the City, didn’t work at all in uni years or law college years, he wanted to focus on studying, played the long game and it is paid off.

Has not ‘is’

Yes, this is true, I only worked in the holidays to pay for my music, social life and clothes!

It must be very, very hard to go to Uni now if you don’t qualify for hardship funds or you aren’t wealthy. We are putting a plan together for our 17 year old, as maintenance loans are means tested we are going ti have to find £500 a month for his living expenses probably more. It is daunting but he does eat loads now and in all honesty I probably do pay close to that for food and his social life.