How much do I need to save for Uni per child?

[cheapandchic]

Can anyone give me a realistic figure for university, including housing and food and such? At the moment my kids are young, but living in London I can't seem to save a penny. Hopefully things will get better but I need to have a rounded figure in mind as a goal to save for each child.

seeker
since EVER in other countries
why not here now?

TalkinPeace2 - it is not parents' responsibility in many European countries - as there are only nominal fees.

Rest of you, listen up. Talkinpeace2 doesn't think YOUR children deserve to go to university. Or at least only some of them. To the pits for the rest.

my comparison was actually with the USA

I am aware that I am not answering your question OP - but i don't plan to pay for my DS uni tuition or living expenses. I may give him a top up now and again.

University students - aged 18 - are adults and should be able to sort themselves out financially. I think it is part of growing up to manage your own money (and debts). If parents fund the whole thing - these 21 year olds will graduate debt free but unaware of the value of cash.

Just my opinion!!!

It's not a parental responsibility, but an awful lot of us benefited from parents who paid for fees/basic living costs and left debt free and want to provide the same for our DCs.

Quite frankly, the silly sums involved just from my graduating year (first fees year, how rather quaintly small those sums seem now) meant that so many friends in their early 20s racked up further personal debts, as if you're already £25k in debt, what's another £100/grand/£5k etc? It seems to have actually caused the opposite mentality to 'learning about money' as instead it's taught the normalisation of personal debt, that an overdraft is something everyone has, that if you want something you borrow to pay for it.

In the US, most universities offer extremely generous means-tested bursaries to students who wouldn't be able to afford to go to university at all in the UK if they were debt-averse (which let's face it is what we're being encouraged to be these days whilst at the same time forcing this bizarre funding system on us.)

Most European students pay nothing for their fees- in fact their fees are paid by their governments if they decide to study in the UK. In fact the only EU students who will be paying full whack will be English students- not Welsh or Scottish, just English.

And the govt justification for all this? "Why should your postman pay for your child's university education?" Well, how about because that postman might have a degree, might want to take a degree, or might have children who want to take degrees?

Just one of the many retrograde ways in which this govt proves itself to be out of touch and elitist in a bad way.

Telsa, that isn't what TiP means, and you know it. I agree with her fwiw.

I agree with supernannyisace I took loans and at one point had 3 part time jobs to pay my way through Uni. I now have a great job, which I could not have secured without a degree and don't miss the loan repayments from my salary as they started as soon as I started work so they were never there to miss. It teaches you the real value of education and that you need to work hard to make the most of what is a fun but very expensive 3/4 years of your life.

Hmmm.
My degree was free and I was given a grant to live on.

It didn't stop me understanding the meaning and value of money.

"Since when has paying for university been a parent's responsibility?"
Since when has it not? Parents were income assessed under the old university grants system. Before that, unless the student had won a scholarship, the parents paid.

Didn't know that about the scholarship lily.
I'd heard people say they won a scholarship to so and so university and wondered what it meant.

There hasn't been a long period in history then, when it was essentially free.

In the US, most universities offer extremely generous means-tested bursaries to students who wouldn't be able to afford to go to university at all in the UK if they were debt-averse

I don't understand this statement . In the USA it's very hard to get significant funding; you'd have to be very able academically and poor enough to get free medical care to get something similar to full funding.

In 1985, friend's dad supported the family of 6 on an income of $28k gross. He was asked to contribute $3k/annum to my friend's Uni education; she laughed; the family simply didn't have $3k to spare. She took out higher interest loans to cover the gaps. After 18 months she dropped out of Uni & had to start repaying the loans about 6 months later (didn't matter what her income was wrt payment schedule, not that she really had any income at that point). I think she defaulted on all loans in the end. Americans simply aren't very debt adverse, or they would never go to Uni.

The Ivy League may have big bursary funds
but the State Universities - to which the vast bulk of students go do not.
www.economist.com/node/21541398
American "ex-students have debts approaching $1 trillion"

In University education, More is NOT better
and Asian Countries expect people to pay for what they will receive ....

i'm not worrying about it. my student loan isn't being repaid, so it doesn't matter whether its £5k or £50k...

god knows what the system is going to be in 14 years time- i'm better off worrying about the expenditure I can plan for.

duchesse It is not the case that in the States the majority of students fet help with funding. They do not. A very very few, exraordinarily able students get help. And there is some help if you fall within defined catagories of perceived disadvantage (The US is big on quotas) but the vast majority of students get no help!!!

Don't worry about what money you need now. This is like NZ back 10 years ago, when we started charge fees. It just went up and up until there's not a chance parents can pay for it unless you are loaded. The best parents can do in NZ is to let their kids stay at home while they are at university. Most of my peer stayed at home while at uni, while our parents all stayed in halls. (I am from Auckland so I have a choice to stay at home. Same with you OP being in London).

By the way, in NZ the fees are no long capped and the charge varies by paper you take. So you pay less for a law paper, than an engineering one, for example. Ultimate user pays.

what happens if parents cant afford to save?

onelittlebaby there is some pressure from certain universities for the end of fee capping here. Lord knows how much Oxbridge, for example, would charge if allowed.

Slartybartfast you skip the country . If you choose a country that has no ties with your old one, then you basically never have to pay it back. This is the case for kiwis who've moved to the states. But not for those in Oz or the UK.

My DH asked just that question yesterday when I drew his attention to this thread.

Whathappens if DC move abraod to work upon graduation?

See here for information about Harvard's scholarship programme. If the household income is under $80,000 per year you can apply for funding or part funding. That's about £51,000 at the moment. Of course the fees are a lot higher in the US, but their scholarships are awarded on a sliding scale according to your family income, are extremely generous and for the right candidate in very restricted circumstances they even include return flights and spending money. Which means that if you are bright and able and come from a poor family in the UK you would be much better off applying to Harvard or any Ivy League college (they all have very good scholarship programmes) than Oxbridge.

My friend's daughter spent a year at the Uni of Missouri where she was awarded a state scholarship despite only having lived in the country for a few months before applying (she did the last year of school in the US and then stayed on for university).

wordfactory NZ has a reciprocal agreement with Oz and the UK to catch student loan absconders. I don't know how exactly it works. But if you buggered off to say the middle east, or the states, then basically you never have to pay a penny back.

Just looking at the NZ herald on this. It seems like the default rate is very high for overseas debtors. According to this newspaper article:

There were 97,392 overseas-based borrowers at the start of this year - 47,036 of whom were in default and owing nearly $308 million.

So more than half who are overseas are in default. We are a country of only 4 million people, to put it into perspective.

You are required to continue paying whilst abroad, so unless you genuinely never intend to return to the UK then absconding doesn't really help.

MrsHoarder if the loan is large enough, people might not return. It's all about whether it's worth it. If the earning potential is much higher overseas, the loan is sufficiently big, then people will consider. For example, if you end up with a £100k loan, and you can earn £30k here, but say £60k in the states easily (which is the difference between oz and nz), then young people will consider leaving their family behind and forge a new life overseas. It's very sad for the country and very sad for families.