Have you looked at the fee calculators for university fees?

[CountessDracula]

www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-loan-repayment-calculator

Assuming an initial debt of £40k

A low earning graduate will pay off in £22k over 30 years
A middle earning graduate will pay off £56,409 over 24.5 years
A high earning graduate will pay off £50,208 over 14 years

How can it be right that the middle earner pays more than the high earner?

This system is a load of shite

I am so unimpressed by this - this is from Bristol, what debt you accrue is ENTIRELY dependent on family income, not future ability to pay.
From Bristol University;

"Is the University of Bristol offering any tuition fee waiver for students starting in 2012?

Yes. UK (home) students from lower income families will be eligible for a fee waiver (which reduces tuition fee liability) for each year of their programme, depending upon their household income level and being in receipt of living cost grant from the Government.

* Students whose residual household income is £15,000 or below, and who are in receipt of a living cost grant will have a reduced tuition fee liability of £3,500.

As a result, these students will pay no more for their higher education than they would under the current financial arrangements.

* Students whose residual household income is between £15,001 and £20,000, and who are in receipt of a living cost grant will have a reduced tuition fee liability of £4,500.
* Students whose residual household income is between £20,001 and £25,000, and who are in receipt of a living cost grant will have a reduced tuition fee liability of £6,000."

It's crap isn't it Lily? If your family has an income of £26k then you'll be shafted frankly.

What's so SO unfair is that the people who get those reduced fees may go on to be head of a big multi-national bank, and get MILLIONS of pounds in bonuses, but still the person who is working as a primary teacher will be saddled with 56k of debt to pay back, (once you take into account the interest), 1/3 of which pays for part of the incredibly wealthy person's uni education.

It's also SO galling that there is no mandate for this whatsoever - the Conservatives could only get this through because of the votes of the LibDems (remember the Conservatives didn't win the last election, they just lost least badly, they weren't given a mandate to govern).

That would be the LibDems who, to a man, promised "I will oppose ANY rise in tuition fees". Many LibDem seats were won on this ticket.

And now, because of them, we have this, frankly, shambolic, and disastrously unfair scheme.

Has anyone else noticed the big discrepancy between what a male is likely to pay back and a female? It's all down to differences in salary and doesn't take career breaks into consideration (which will tend to make the differences even bigger) but it's a bit shocking to say the least (especially the National Average one).

Basically the new system is a vast improvement on the old for most females but much worse for all but the lowest paid males.

Yes it is a shambles, and the fact that different unis are offering different levles of help makes it more so. We have to look at what they are offering before DD decides which one to apply to.

Birmingham gives grants if income levels are below 16K whereas Manchester its 25K. Also as in the example sheffield give grants if incomes are low and come from a deprived area, which doesn't apply to us.

I just don't feel comfortable with the parents saying why should mine subsidise others when that's not what is happening. Mine will have to apply to places that will give us help and I would hate for her to get there and be shunned because of it. We didn't do that to kids in the playground who got free school meals and I would hope this doesn't happen in the SU bar.

adam - i can't imagine that students would do that. Plus its the parents who will taking on as much financial burden as they can so they shield their children from debt - so its parents like me that are most annoyed by it. And we are used to subsidising poorer people.

Yes, I also subsidise poorer people, but don't get annoyed by it so much.

I don't think anyone begrudges subsidising lower income families with maintenance costs. The problem is that the debt is paid back ACCORDING TO FUTURE INCOME. This was how it was rolled out by the politicians. And as such, parental income just shouldn't come into it at all.

but adamschic, it is what will happen - of the 9k fee charged, 3k must be used to subsidise students from lower income families. The government also chips in, but only 6k of the fee paid by most students will go towards their own degree.

afaik, 9k is paid by all students, some can get extra grants and choose to have these knocked off the fees or go towards accommodation or even cash to live on. The powers that be are trying to persuade eligible people to use the grants to pay towards the tuition fees as it benefits them, it's of no benefit to the students.

Hardly any uni's are charging 6K because they need 9K or every student to be able to provide the courses. They just have to put aside a small amount to offer bursaries. This has always been the case. Seems like they have sold you the idea that if it wasn't for less fortunate ones yours would only be paying 6K, which isn't true.

for not 'or'

explained here

The maintenance grants are entirely different from the tuition fee bursaries.

I think it is right to help with maintenance. I think it is wrong to differentiate the fees in the this way, because they are supposed to be based on future income.

Oh I see it was a Daily Mail Articles firing you all up.

Right this is the way I see it. A bright child from a sink school gets good enough grades to go to uni. Say from a single parent household so is entitled to £3,200 (approx) maintenance grant (non repayable). The uni's also give him a bursary from this fund of £3,000. They say you can have it knocked of your fees, as accomodation or as a cash sum. How will he live if he has it knocked of fees. He will need most of the £6,200 just to pay accomodation and food. Extras will have to come from the part-time work or maintenance loan. If he takes the tuition fee reduction then that only leaves £3,200 to live on so he will have to use the full loan £4,500. He is in the same debt either way.

I suspect most will take it toward living costs as they need this now, not in 10 years time iyswim. Also if unis do struggle and have to bring down costs, eventually, I would hope that they backdate it to 2012.

I'm sure that the universities would still be charging £9,000 even if they weren't required to contribute to the bursaries fund - their funding is being slashed all over the place . I can't imagine there will be masses of bursaries, or that everyone who applies will get one, so it's probably a bit of a red herring to think masses of people are going to be paying lower fees.

nonono, that was the only article I could find in a swift google!

I was more fired up by the stuff on the uni's websites tbh.

I don't think you need to be as worried about this aspect (subsidies for low income parents) of the scheme as you are LilyBolero. While it appears on the face of it rather unfair, it is essential to take some fairly major steps to widen access to prevent universities being the preserve of the rich. Children from lower income families statistically really do have much lower chances of going to university and going into higher paid jobs. With this in mind, giving them a fee discount, will in many cases not make much/any difference to the amount they ultimately repay (since only the highest paid will ever fully repay their loans) but it hopefully really will make a difference to how many disadvantaged children take up university places.

I also don't think it's fair to say that middle class children are subsidising them - if you look at the international (non EU) fees for UK universities, it's clear that even middle class children paying 'full' fees are still paying substantially less than foreign (non EU) counterparts so are presumably also being subsidised from somewhere just to a slightly lesser degree than their less wealthy peers.

gelatinous - I just think it should be fair. A non-upfront fee, paid back as a proportion of future salary should be no more of a bar for a low income family student than for a middle income family student.

Maintenance costs - absolutely, that would be a real deterrent, and I'm more than happy to subsidise them. I'm not happy that my children are going to be stung for SO much money - we're talking having to pay back £56k EACH, just in tuition fees - that's nearly a quarter of a million pounds for my children just in tuition fees.

We already pay for the so called subsidy that they will get - through our income tax.

What's more, the argument that fee subsidies will encourage students from low income families, is a nonsense. Because they have to complete their A Levels in order to go to university, and EMA is being abolished, thus making it harder for children from low income families to go to university.

On the subject of abolishing EMA. School now have a 16-19 bursary fund to play, will cover books, transport, lunches, school trips (ski-ing) resits and uni visits. They asking people to apply. Turns out we meet the income criteria (hurray) but hang on, because I actually earn my money with all it's extra cost of doing so, petrol etc etc it means we won't get any help afterall, it's only for people who are don't work but receive the same money as me, silly me

See it's not always fair even for poor people like me .

EMA is a scandal I think. Hopefully people will stay on at school though because
a) there is supposed to be provision for the extremely poor
b) living at home and continuing at school is much less of an extreme step than going away to university
c) the job market is a bit grim at the moment, so not much in the way of alternatives.

I think arguing the relative fairness of subsidising maintenance over fees is a bit like arguing semantics to be honest. I do agree that extra maintenance money would probably be more use, but equally it's unwise to forget just how debt averse children who have grown up in a household continually worried over finance may be. I don't begrudge it to be honest, but I share your pain over the eye watering amount of debt my children will rack up going to university.

no system will be completely fair for everyone all the time unfortunately.

Is it true if our dc marry before going to university they will be assessed on their own income rather than ours? If so, will this increase numbers tying the knot very young for economic reasons?

Gelatinous, you put it so much better than me (you can tell I never went to uni), and thanks for contributing on as I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall.

I think the idea behind giving the option of a tuition fee reduction might be to encourage students to study close to home, live at home, and just take the maintenance grants which would mean that they could at least contribute something to the household income whilst studying. Yes, that makes sense for them to reduced fees rather than take it as maintenance.

I expect it would change if they got married. What a terrible thought, all these 17 year olds rushing into marriage ahead of the freedom of uni .

It will be interesting to see the outcome of the pending case, two English students are taking the Scottish Govt to court under EU rules. Their argument is that EU students and Scottish students will pay considerably less. How is this fair? It should be the same for the whole of the UK