WTF! Anyone else horrified at this Guardian article about "student" food?

[MrsTittleMouse]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/21/student-cooking-recipes

It all costs an absolute fortune! My DH has a good job, but we don't have enough grocery budget to cook half this stuff. What are they all on?

I got a full grant when I was at Uni (one of the last to be able to get one, I think) so by working during vacations and being careful what I spent, I was able to come out of Uni with minimal debt.

Students these days know they are going to be clobbered with huge debt no matter what they do, so there's less incentive to be so frugal.

frankie - I think debt is seen as less of a problem too. I never had a student loan, but I think the most you could borrow was about £3k a year, and then most people had run up about £3-5k of overdraft by the end of their degree - so perhaps £15k maximum.
I think now with tuition fees on top that much larger amounts of debt are considered normal and acceptable, and I'm sure loads of students just keep borrowing because generally student overdrafts don't have interest and there are no repayment terms so the actual cost of borrowing all that cash doesn't register until graduation has been and gone.

The Theo Randall pasta recipe looks lovely, might give that a go this weekend!

"Students these days know they are going to be clobbered with huge debt no matter what they do"

Untrue. If daddy's paying, daddy's paying. Twenty years ago he was paying your upkeep, now he's paying upkeep plus fees. As upkeep plus fees comes to less than school fees were costing, it's still cheaper than the sixth form.

I'm a student & DS & I eat very well. I don't drink much or smoke, though. I know I'm not a typical student, as I do have DS, but I can't do anything else fun (can't go out, have no friends up here, etc), so I may as well eat nice food. Students prioritise their money & it rarely ends up being on food, that's all.

Oh, & I love to cook & bake. Even before I knew I was pregnant I took all of my baking tins to university with me!

I'm sitting on the sofa in my jammies now

A friend of mine only ate tinned hotdogs for about three weeks. It still makes me sick to think of it.

pmsl at cyteen - good spot!

how's about his for competitive student poverty combined with warped priorities...I bought a slip (you know, a black silky thing with wee straps that some proper grown up women wear under posh clothes) and wore it as a dress because I couldn't afford a proper dress. I could, however, afford a ticket to a black tie women's football team dinner that required the wearing of said slip dress. and if anyone suggests that a black tie women's football dinner was a thing of refinement I'd like to refer them to the pictures of me that made it to the appropriately named Bog Sheet. (thank the lord I predated facebook)

I lived in a shared house with 5 others. We had no central heating, no TV. We did have reasonable cooking facilities but I had an extremely small budget so my parents would take me to the supermarket when they dropped me at the beginning of term, and they would pay. I couldn't afford to supplement that with much, so I ate a lot of tinned tomatoes, pasta, tuna.... Mind you I don't think tuna is as cheap as it used to be, is it?

Also ate toast for a main meal whenever possible, with marmite for the vitamins. Went to any event that had "refreshments" anywhere, that provided some interesting experiences as well as a few meals.

I had no car, no-one I knew did (but it was Cambridge so ardly surprising). I took out the full loan (one of the first) and got really annoyed by people (many of these at Oxbridge) who took it out and bleated about how they put the whole lot into a high-interest account and made a profit.

I walked everywhere, didn't drink or smoke, and worked in all the vacations. I was anaemic and very thin, but relied on vacations for my mum to fatten me up.

My baby brother is off to Oxford this term and I am highly amused by his en-suite study bedroom with wi-fi, internal phone. My college accomm had bare brick walls, not even plastered, shared loo and shower between 15 people.

It is a different experience completely to my student days, but then people's expectations are higher and people are more used to a better standard of living, I suppose.

i went to a RG from 2000-2003. I was very much an outlier for shopping in charity shops and not being able to afford to drink much. No free prescriptions/glasses for me either. I didn't have to pay fees in years 2 and 3, but my parents were not in a position to help me out financially (and nor should they be expected to).

"Untrue. If daddy's paying, daddy's paying. Twenty years ago he was paying your upkeep, now he's paying upkeep plus fees. As upkeep plus fees comes to less than school fees were costing, it's still cheaper than the sixth form."

Eh? What if daddy's not paying? How many parents can afford to put their kids through university without the kids having to get loans?

When I was at uni, my fees were paid and a combination of grant/loans/my part time work/small parental contribution paid for my upkeep. These days, I'd just have to take a larger loan, my parents couldn't have afforded to pay any more than they did.

OMG- I can't afford to make those meals now!

Luckily I got a part time job in a fast food place in my final year so 3 days a week my entire days food was my free meal from there and used to fill up on diet coke which was unlimited.

I'm a student. I do have a car (was given an old banger for my 17th birthday and traded it in last year on the scrappage scheme :o) but I share it with my brother so I leave it at home most of the time. It's pointless expense to run it at uni - my housemate drives hers everywhere, pays the petrol, parking, etc, then scrimps and saves on food to go to the gym! Hasn't occurred to her to just walk to and from uni (it's only 10 minutes away) and save the money - and she's not from a wealthy family by any means. She has a job though.

My parents helped me a lot last year - I don't qualify for any means tested grants, only the standard loan, which doesn't cover my rent, let alone food or anything else. And I don't even drink! (Am a useless student.) This year I will qualify for some grant - all of £98.30 a term - because my mum lost her job in the recession. But, get this, it's being taken out of my loan. So I don't have to pay it back, later, but it's not actually any extra money... Seems rather pointless to me.

I'm trying to get a job but there just aren't that many around, especially when I have to go to lectures at strange hours. My parents won't be able to me much this year either, because my dad was unemployed for a while (recession, again) and so though now he has another job, there's very little spare cash while they make up for the debt that came about as a result of that... Tricky. I honestly don't know how some people cope at uni.

Anyway, my point was, I've eaten well for the first two years (never stuff like that article, though!) and have been stressing over how I'm going to manage to even eat next year, but you've given me a few ideas. Thank you!

lankyalto I smile too at the ensuite bathrooms. when I had a room in college I had to go down 2 flights of stairs, go outside and across a quad to get to the nearest loo/shower. and I couldn't afford a dressing gown...(ok so if I hadn;t paid for that football dinner I could have bought a dressing gown...but hardly a difficult decision when you're 19...a dressing gown was the height of decadence and I never even considered it )

Oh, I did know a couple of people who had flats bought for them (to rent out rooms to friends) or 'invested' their student loan - which seemed astounding to me as I came from a pretty poor town and had never met any really middle-class people before. But they still ate/lived really cheaply, certainly more than i did - and left without the overdraft I had too.

"What if daddy's not paying? How many parents can afford to put their kids through university without the kids having to get loans? "

45% of Oxbridge's intake is from private schools, so 45% of people at Oxford and Cambridge.

33% of the Russell Group's intake is from private schools, so 33% of people at Russell Group universities.

(Yes, there are a miniscule number of people on assorted assisted places, bursaries and so on: make those numbers 40% and 30% for a wild overestimate of people who didn't pay full whack for their private education).

Then there are parents who would have at a push paid for private education but didn't need to because of state grammars, high-end comps, etc, who have therefore notionally "saved" £50K per child and can therefore spend that on university education. Said state grammars and high-end comps are, after private schools, the next disproportionate sources of OB and RG students, so they probably add back in the numbers we knocked off in the previous paragraph, and more.

Then there are parents who went to university in the 1980s and whose parents had to lay out £2K/yr in maintenance (no loans then) who don't see laying out £10K/yr now as either unreasonable or unexpected, and have prepared for it.

"Maybe it's due to all the helicopter parents now, who cannot bear to see their children slumming it"

Hopefully by the time mine go to uni (eldest is 8) there will be a backlash. Slumming it at uni was a kind of right of passage. Seems sad to think that the next generation won't be able to indulge in competitive slumming.

tokyo, my brother was one of those private-schooled Oxbridge students. He had a full scholarship at said private school and it didn't cost mum and dad a penny. Be careful with your stereotypes, would you? Quite a lot of people also (rightly or wrongly) make big sacrifices to send children to private school and don't have limitless cash to spend on making university cushy for them afterwards.

at cyteen. I love the idea of posh students sitting round taste-testing cheap tinned tomatoes.

'Yah, Gregory, this one tastes a little metallic, what?'

'Why, yes, Tarquin, I believe it has a slight nose of rust to it. Very pleasant.'

Sosmix pie and baked beans- that was a good student meal if you really needed feeing. I had the Grub On A Grant book too- it was brilliant.

I must admit these are a little on the pricey side. I worked in a chip shop through Uni, evenings and weekends and still had chips for tea [free perk of the job] and just scraped through financially.

I work in a Uni, I see the pot noodle tubs and tins of baked beans in the recycling bins. I also see the domino's delivery bike making it's rounds as well. It's better 'value for money' to live on cheap grub, most students would rather spend the money on booze on their night out, than eat nice grub like this. But not all students are like this.

I volunteered for this 'pass it on' last year, the Jamie Oliver thing. A few staff thought it would be nice for students to have some quick, easy and cheap meals 'passed on' to them. So we all came up with a list, our local supermarket gave us the supplies and we passed it on to students in their shared kitchens in the halls of residence. It was fun for all of us and most were keen/interested to learn. I did spag bog and mushroom risotto. One group of boys really were inept, bless them. The SU thought this was such a good idea, they are introducing a cooking themed week shortly after freshers week this year, to improve the cooking skills of students. We have a canteen on site, run by a private company, who charge a fortune for crap food and only at lunchtimes. So students have to fend for themselves much more.

"
tokyo, my brother was one of those private-schooled Oxbridge students. He had a full scholarship at said private school and it didn't cost mum and dad a penny. Be careful with your stereotypes, would you?"

As I said, "Yes, there are a miniscule number of people on assorted assisted places, bursaries and so on: make those numbers 40% and 30% for a wild overestimate of people who didn't pay full whack for their private education".

What percentage of private school pupils are on full scholarships? 2%? 3%

Oh, I'm sorry - for some reason I thought you meant bursaries at university. My mistake there.

But, I think you must admit, there are loads of people who send their children to private school despite it being a real financial struggle, and they don't have resources to subsidize their adult children at university. Whether it's right or wrong to send the children to private school in the first place is another matter, but it's just wrong to think all ex-private-school students come from families who're rolling in money.