University Finance

[Janh]

i don't know how many parents of 17+'s are using this board, but for any that are, or any coming up to university - are you aware that the allowance against income for each other child at home is £79 pa? and that it has been at this level for over 30 years?
when your child leaves school you lose your £10+ a week child benefit - which nobody pretends is enough to keep a child of any age - and yet this is all they allow against tuition and student loans.
anybody want to start a campaign????

Apparently 28.4% of 19-21 year olds in Australia attend University and in rural ares it is 18.3%.

Bloss what do you think of OU? Have to say that in my opinion it is a pile of sh*te where I spent the most miserable 3 years of my life.

i think the figure here is more like 60%. is this significant?

sml, i thought you were talking about open university for a minute! (i think OU means that to most people...)

No, I love the Open University!

Janh, 60% for university sounds pretty high. The Aussie figures are only for 19-21 year olds so in any case probably aren't directly comparable. I just looked at the Dept. of Education website and it said that in 1999 of the 350,000 or so in the process of taking a first degree, 32% were aged over 21 (yep I'm that bored at work!).

I thought the figures for the UK were closer to 20 - 25% but I might be wrong.

Was just reading an article which quoted the figure that 48% of UK 21-23 olds had 2 or more A levels so 60% going on to University does sound a bit high.

bells, i don't know where i got that from - i don't THINK i made it up...i have a feeling it relates to 18-yr-olds who start courses rather than all those who are in them.
but i could well be wrong!

i just looked up the dfee website and it said 2.33 million students were enrolled "at colleges in the further education sector in ENGLAND" (my caps; what about wales, scotland and NI i wonder???) but no breakdown by age or percentage of population.

HI Janh, I think that there are around 1m full time students in further education in Britain with the rest part time.