Uni accommodation rental costs?

[copycat]

DS1 has received an offer, yesterday afternoon, of a place in his third choice accommodation which is ensuite and therefore expensive at ... gulp ... £5011pa. I have emailed to request an alternative offer

DS1 is my oldest child and I am new to this; please can I be nosy and enquire how much your DC is paying for halls and how are you or DC funding the cost?

[QuiteOldGal]

SilverApples If your DD sorted it out all herself she probably would have just got the un-assessed loan which is about £3300 because I think to get any more parents have to log in and put all their income details in.

Our DS gets about this and we now give him £3300 a year towards rent in a shared house and he has a supermarket job for all the extras he wants

[SilverApples]

That makes sense.
I wonder if she'd have got more if she had used our income levels?

[amumthatcares]

Silver - no problem and please don't apologise for trying to help. These things have a tendency to get muddled I was just reaching for the phone to rant at SF

I'm not sure your DD would get more with the level of your joint income , but always worth a look

[fussychica]

DS paid about £3,300 (incl an £800 reduction for it being his firm) year before last for a single room not en-suite. In a shared house last year which worked out similar once bills were added to rent. He's on a year abroad this year so don't know what the current charges are.

[JellicleCat]

£4122 self-catering flat, not en-suite, for DD. En-suite flats are just under £5000 self catering (but thankfully she didn't get into one of those!). So not really OTT OP, but agree it's a LOT of money.

[burberryqueen]

I really think that we are heading back towards a university system for the privileged
really? have you only just noticed?
i live in a university town and today's students look/seem incredibly pampered and moneyed.

[gazzalw]

There's a difference between being pampered and moneyed and privileged. Entitled yes privileged not necessarily...Some overlap obviously...

I work at a Uni and don't assume that the 50% of that age group who go onto Uni are all from privileged backgrounds. What I would say is that they all seem to be obsessed with the superficial things of life - they're a money obsessed (by and large) generation and don't seem to have any notion of living frugally - it's all about conspicuous consumption.

DW and I were talking about this t'other day. When we were at Uni we lived incredibly frugally, hardly ever went out for a meal, bought a couple of new items of clothing (always in the Sales) a year, lived on baked beans on toast and simple, cheap food, cycled/walked everywhere.....

These days they all look as if they've got £30K a year jobs!

I am actually shocked reading this thread as we are so out of the loop that I don't really think it occurred to me that parents were expected to contribute towards their children's education unless they choose to. I thought the debt was upon the shoulders of the students....

So does the parental income also take into consideration younger, still-living at home dependents when working out how much a student will receive in terms of a loan? And also where one lives?

[SilverApples]

The other issue is the lack of easily-acquired short-term and part-time jobs that were around when I was a student. I did half a dozen different jobs that helped me through the years. Some involved free food too.
.

[SilverApples]

Good point TAD, some of the accommodation I lived in was borderline habitable, but I could afford it. Build too many flats with ensuites and there will be no places left for those for whom it is unaffordable.
DD has soret accommodation by February for each September so far. 7 months in advance. She's been paying for this year's from 1st August.

[SilverApples]

I've never understood the logic in that. They should give all students a loan that covers tuition and living to a basic standard, certainly enough to eat as well as pay rent. (I still think it should be grants)
Then when the students all get the fabulous jobs that the government claim are there for them, they will repay what they borrowed. But if they remain shelf-stackers and answering phones in call centres the government reaps the harvest of lies they sowed and no money is repaid.
Why should it involve parents if it is a loan and not a grant?

[MABS]

dd 's accom is £4950 in Newcastle which we will pay for her , she got catered halls, only thing available, not en suite though :(

She got basic maintenance loan 3.5K ish?? which I hope she can live on with a part time job if needed. That sound ok to people?

[seventhchild]

At my nephew's uni, there are kids from rich homes who are fine, and kids from low income households who get full loans and bursaries, which adds up to about £10k - but the kids in the middle are buggered unless their parents have a spare few grand to give them, and many don't. Some of his friends have virtually nothing after paying accommodation, they are living off plain pasta fgs. And if the 10K loan + bursary kids run out of money the uni hardship funds will give them more because of their parent's low incomes - but the squeezed middle kids trying to get by on £3,500 or so can't get any help, because, of course they want to see the parent's p60, and on paper they are earning OK...

I know everyone says they should get jobs, but there's a lot of competition, and grades suffer.

[gazzalw]

Gulp - I've been sadly deluded. DS (12) is still a way off but not that far off....

What on earth is the point of having a system that's neither a grant nor a loan but a strange hybrid.

So parents with one child and no mortgage on a salary of £50K (total income) would be expected to pay the same as parents with a £700+ mortgage and other younger siblings at home....

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

We have an income of £5000 and dd's accommodation is just over £5000 a year. She gets the minimum loan, which is about £3500. We're hoping that we'll be able to fund the accommodation so that she can live off the loan. It's a worry though, especially as we'll likely have one year where both dds are in uni at the same time. Agree that middle income families are in an impossible position here, whereas 'poor' and 'rich' are fine.

[gazzalw]

That sounds dire, RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie (DW is a Remus Lupin fan too BTW!).....How does the Govt expect people to find an extra several £K out of a salary of £50,000 unless you've got no mortgage (which most of us have particularly in London)....

I'm officially more than depressed......

Yes, the squeezed middle again.

This is even worse than the grant scenario. When DW was at Uni she had one year when a sibling was at Uni too - they both got decent grants (previously she'd been on the minimum one) because FIL's considerable salary was effectively divided by two for having two children in higher education simultaneously.....That was probably fair...

And in those days parents could set up some type of covenant which had some type of tax benefits or reimbursement....

[amumthatcares]

The position we find ourselves in (and I'm sure we aren't alone) is that the maintenance loan for this year was based on parent income from the tax year 11/12. It just so happens that DH (self employed) had a one off high income due to unrepeated work and so DD has been awarded a low loan. In year 12/13 our income dropped right down and has stabilised at that this year so far. Yes, she will get a higher award next year but that doesn't help us support her this year on our lower income when her loan comes nowhere near to covering her rent!

Her friend, who's parents are divorced has been awarded such a high loan and grant, she doesn't need to work at uni. Her dad who owns his own business and supports his ex generously. It doesn't seem as though the system is flawless by any means.

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

£50000 less tax is far from 'rich' though I know I can't complain. We do have some savings, and that's what will be paying for the accommodation.

DD1 is pretty sensible and we're going to work out a weekly suggested budget for her, so that hopefully she'll mainly stick to that and then have the chance to splurge a bit at the end of term or whatever.

[MABS]

dd is not sensible with money! so we will be transferring a weekly amount to her out of the the 3.5k I think. we will pay all the accom in one go, she not involved.