Arghh - what student loan can someone take out now parents earn above minimum amount?

[BettyBedlam]

Confused! I thought any university student could take out a student loan to cover tuition fees AND living expenses, so long as it is paid back slowly once they start earning x amount. I have also often seen threads on here with people saying they will expect their children to fund themselves at university.

Someone mentioned today that this is only the case if parents earn under the minimum amount and that parents are expected to fund living expenses - is this true?

Assuming the rules on income are still the same as when my two were at university, if the parents' income is over a certain level, the student can only borrow a percentage of the maximum loan - when DS started it was 75%, but I think it's dropped to 70% now. As 70% of the maximum loan is rarely enough to live on at university, the student will either have to rely on their parents to make up the difference, or try to find a job, which is getting more and more difficult.

What is the Income threashold?

I don't know Zeeboo.

RustyBear - is that 70-75% variable, or does it apply at a flat rate to everyone over a certain threshold?

A friend with a child doing an engineering degree says there is no way he would have time to work and do his degree - what happens to those with a heavy lecture load? Or parents who can afford to pay but just don't want to?

The student loan has two components.. tuition fees and maintenance loan.
Tuition loan is covered completely. Maintenance is means testes on parents income.

It's pretty crap to be honest. I have one currently at Uni, and one who will go this year. DD1's maintenance loan barely covered her accommodation. We send her £30 a week for food and she has to work in the hols to save for the term ..she is a med student so hasn't time in the term.
DD2 will be in a similar position

Most students CAN do p/t job..most academic degrees don't have that heavy a lecture schedule and the students union will help kids look for work, BUT heavy courseloads.. medicine, nursing, engineering etc don't allow much time for extra jobs.

We earned £100 too much for my DD1 to get the uni's own bursary.. just that much, and it sucks!

this page [http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/Typesoffinance/DG_194804 here] shows the breakdown of the loan, and the parental income figures where grants kick in. There a calculator where you can put in your personal income levels and it tells you what your DC would be entitled to.

DD1 gets the maximum loan level, plus a bit of grant (some of which is deducted from the loan total), which covers her hall fees; we give her money each month for living expenses. She would find it hard to fit in a term time job, as her course is quite intense, but she'll work over the summer to rebuild her pot of personal spending money (we give her enough for food, travel home and a basic social life - she has to fund her clothes shopping habit herself ).

Thank you. Can students even get holiday jobs in these tough times though?

I have two DCs that started this year. It's awful, the maintenance hardly covers their hall fees. One has a job she really hates in the holidays. She has to do split shifts but that's the way it goes. Wished she'd gone back after Christmas snuffle free and rested.
Don't think there is much chance of holiday jobs unless it was a Saturday job.

Betty -it's a flat rate, or at least it was when my DC were at uni. When DS started he could only borrow 75% of the maximum because of our income, by the time DD started it was 72% and someone told me later it had gone down to 70%. (That's just the maintenance loan, as Medusa explained, you can borrow all of the tuition)

There is also an income-related maintenance grant, though it's not much - the odd thing was that though DD couldn't borrow the full amount of the maintenance loan, the year she started (2008) they raised the income level for the maintenance grant quite substantially, so that she actually got a couple of hundred pounds per year that she doesn't have to repay. The next year they apparently realised that they couldn't afford this and the income limit went down again, though not as far down as it had been - but DD and those in her year kept it for the whole three years. Which meant that in 2009-10, first, second and third year students were on three different systems.

Medusa, that's dreadful luck. I don't think my dd will have enough time for a job assuming she gets her grades and we are above the thresholds for everything. Not rolling in money though - who ever is with 4 kids? Plus 2 more kids to follow in next 3 years....

As in at university obviously - not intending to have 2 more kids at my advanced age!

Tuition fees are covered completely. Maintenance loan can be income assessed but it doesn't have to be. If you don't get your income assessed your DC can still get about 75 percent of the full loan. DD2 is in her third year and she got this in her first 2 years. Our income was assessed this year as I earned very little in the qualifying year and she got about a £1000 more than in the previous years..

I have recently been looking into it all (ds is year 12) and we earn slightly too much for any help so he will only receive the minimum same as everything for the middle earners, earn too much for any help but because we have to pay 100% for everything we usually end up worse off then those who are being helped.

From what research I have done, his maintenance loan will barely cover halls and therefore we are going to have to provide living funds which I am having palpitations about already

Here

www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/parents-2012-guide

Best guide to student finance and bang up to date.

oh thanks for that, balia - DS2 is already there, so the tuition fee inf is different for him, but the loan/grant is the same, I was wondering what the figures were. I had a text from Student Loans this week saying we can apply online now for next year.

DS2's finance just covered his accommodation costs, with a bit left over, this year; he's at Sheffield & although they have a few rooms at under £100 a week, most are higher, & they have a longer contract than some. His room costs around £4600 & his finance inc a bit of grant is about £5100, so he has £500 a year left to live on ; we were able (luckily) to give him £50 a week for the first term, but he has now got a weekend job.

Next year he will get a lot less because our combined income has increased & is now above the threshold - 65% of £5500 is £3575. He will be living off-campus in a shared house but they haven't committed to one yet so I don't know what it will cost. DS1 has been paying £80-90 a week rent in Newcastle, Sheffield is supposed to be one of the cheapest cities but I doubt if it will be much less than that so his finance won't even cover the rent, let alone bills...even with a job we will have to help him out

oh, he'll get more than £3575, I didn't realise there was a sliding scale - have just gone on to p11. that's a relief!

The maintenance loan for DD2 in her first year fell just short of her halls. So we paid the halls rent. She paid all other costs from her student loan. We now pay most of her rent but she pays some and all the utility bills. She had a job for a short while in the first year and worked at a theme park for the whole of the season last year.

It depends where you are. In Scotland, although tuition is free, if your income is above the threshold your DC only qualify for the minimum loan which is around 950 for the year so not enough for more than travel expenses.

DD has a very part time job and lives at home as we have another two and there is no way we could have paid for her rent/uni accommodation, nor could she have worked enough hours to pay for it without her studies suffering.

I assumed (wrongly!) that as it was a loan not a grant it would be the student who would be paying for her maintenance once earning etc but apparently we are meant to. We are not rich, by the way. We would have found it easier if both tuition and maintenance were loans with the latter more generous. In our case it seems that the English system would have been better.

gosh, that's interesting, Butterflies - I did not know that

are the thresholds the same as in England? If so it's asking a lot, even for a relatively high income family (ie £42K+), to produce £4000 a year per child, after tax, just to match the loan - let alone more on top!

& if you have 2 children in higher ed at once (as you well might in Scotland, with the 4-year courses) you'd have to find upwards of £8000

(well I suppose with 2 they'd make allowances & give them a bit more state finance, but still not a lot, I bet)

ds is planning to live at home but can he get help for travelling costs?

If you have more than one child at university is that taken into account (I knew having them close together was a bad idea)?

mycat, travelling costs aren't a factor in SLC calculations, but his university may offer bursaries if you have relatively low income - some are quite generous. Do a search on the university home page.

NMP, I have 2 there atm, & it only seemed to make a tiny difference when I applied last year - BUT I messed up when I applied for DS1's because the wording is confusing, along the lines of "do you have any other dependants in higher education this year" & I said no, because I didn't at the time I was applying! but by "this year" they really mean "next academic year", which is logical but unclear

so when I came to do DS2's application later on I said yes, & his loan worked out £367 higher, although the grant amount was the same.

I suspect DS2 should have been entitled to the same but dealing with the SLC is so fraught we haven't bothered...

Sadly Ponders, I do believe that they don't take siblings into account. I am not sure how much I really want DS to get an offer now. Bad parent that I am.

Our joint income is £52 plus but not much more, and we dont have anything beyond our income either (which is not taken into account of course) so we are truly stuffed!

I don't even want to think about it. I know on paper we earn too much but we cannot afford to give our daughter any money so what do they do?

My YD will go the following year.

They don't take into account sibblings so it makes it even harder.

why was DS2's loan higher than DS1's then, butterflies? do they just get less in later years? (DS1 is 3rd year this year)

it does seem that kids are ok for money if their parents are either very affluent or very skint - it's Ed M's "squeezed middle" who struggle. DS1 shares a house with 5 others who all have their rent & bills paid by their parents; he has to pay his own

it has always made me cross that pension contributions are deductible but mortgage payments aren't. & that the allowance for younger siblings still at home is a pitiful amount. (& that families where parents are divorced, mother remarries, both sides are loaded, but mother doesn't work, means offspring get maximum grant plus probably bursaries too. that makes me incandescent!!!)

You get less in the last year because it's only supposed to support you till the end of the academic year, not till the start of the new one. Because obviously everyone gets a job straight after they graduate...