Cost of university in UK

[Claybury]

I'm wondering how much does it cost these days to go to university, say a RG, living away from home.
I'm thinking 9k a year fees, 6k accommodation. Add in living costs ? I'm looking at the other thread on here about the interest on the loans ( I thought it was interest free ? It used to be didn't it ?) and the pros and cons of paying up front.
I will have two DC's at university the same time - this is looking scary.
Sorry for such a basic question.

9k Tuition fees - you can borrow this but it isn't interest free. Even if you can afford it, you might be better holding off & borrow it, then at the end of the degree assess whether your child will be a high earner. If not they would never pay it back. Put it towards a house deposit instead. Worth paying it for high earners though.

Accommodation - First year - depends on the university, allocation luck and how fussy your child is (wanting en-suite and so on).... Anything from £3000 (shared) to over £10,000 (London or luxury). My dd lucked out and got a teeny tiny room (no en suite) at the lower end of the scale.
Second year - equally variable, sometimes more expensive, depends on the city / town.

Living costs - how long is a piece of string? Depending on your family income you may be able to get some help. See student finance website. My dd has £100 a week & buys everything from this money (food as she self caters, transport, clothes, books, saves for trips) but others spend a lot more. She has cheap hobbies mind you & I kitted her out before she left.

Cautionary story - if your dc qualify for any grants, make sure they apply. I met some parents who kindly paid all the living costs so that their child didn't get into more debt, only to find out to their horror that dc had taken out the living cost loan as well and had some brilliant parties!

DD graduated in 2013. She has around 30k debt, of which 10k is fees. 20k living.

ON TOP of this we gave her £300 a month, money for books each year, and the occasional top up £200 for rent.

^ DD was is catered accommodation at Oxford for all 3 years though, so food in with the rent kept living costs smaller.

If you look at the websites for the unis you are interested in there is usually a cost of living guide.

Of course tuition is now £9k per year so higher than when MaudeLebowski's daughter was at uni. Then generally its approximately £8-10k per year on top of that for accommodation and living expenses.

Look at moneysavingsexpert.com for the best and clearest info on student finance around to see what maintenance loans etc are available for your child based on your family income.

I have only just gone back to work after a career break, so DS lucked out and got the full grant plus £3k from the uni for being low income and another £1000 for getting an A* when the course requirement was only 3As
So he really is quite well off! but he knows that in a couple of years he won't get these grants so is sitting on it!.

There is another thread on the cost as well claybury
I have one at uni and one Y12 so will have two students overlapping for a while.
After his rent is paid DS gets £300 a month from us to live on which seems more than enough.
Most unis will give an idea of how much for living costs (including accommodation) the average seems to be around £9/10k.
Things that make a difference.
Catered v self catered
Private halls v uni halls
Unis that have room for just first years (the norm) or have hall space for all years.
The private rental market. I was expected DS's second year to be cheaper because I naively thought private rent would be less than halls. No way.
Lifestyle.
The last is important. DS is very stingy frugal and not into clubbing. He has managed comfortably on what we give him. Others he has met have spent way more than him.

Secret, are those figures on top of a maintenance loan or is he using the maintenance loan for his accommodation costs?

His maintenance loan doesn't cover the accommodation. So we top that up and pay him £300 a month. This year the total cost will be about £8500 (including maintenance loan), next year it may well be more as his rent doesn't include bills.
Thankfully he hasn't needed to buy books or equipment, arty courses might have that added cost.

Thanks. That's anout what I'm expecting.

Just to add - while the Conservative party thinks £9,000 per annum tuition fees are fine and dandy - and the LibDems aren't, apparently, distancing themselves from their tuition fees betrayal after the last election, some other parties are less anti-student. Labour party will cut the current insane tuition fees by a third, to £6,000; Greens support abolition of tuition fees.

Fees in France for university courses amount to about £200 per annum. Scotland doesn't charge tuition fees. Welsh fees are much lower than in England. Fees in England are the highest in the whole of Europe. Outrageous.

MNers are saying that the model of teaching on the continent means lecture theatres with like 400+ students in it, and no direct contact with lecturers only with their PhD students/tutors (exactly what you'd get today for an undergrad degree somewhere like UCLA, with much higher tuition fees than UK I think).

I don't mind because I went thru the American system, but a lot of the MNers are aghast. So be careful, you get what you pay for.

You can get a lot more direct contact with lecturers at the less prestigious American Unis (which is also where I went, and turned out to be very very employable even in the UK ).

The Lib Dems are a minority in a coalition government. They do not have absolute power to carry out what they want. Whoever shares power after the election may well have the same problem. It will be a case of negotiating. The Labour position on fees is just trying to woo younger people who felt "betrayed" and the Barnett formula favours the Scots and they have fewer universities. The biggest problem is that we are now pretty certain 50% of student loans will not be repaid. So there is a black hole looming. £9000 pa is not stopping people wanting to go to university because very many of them won't pay it back!!!! University education is not "free" to anyone. Either the tax payer pays for all of it, or the student makes a contribution. Some courses cost way more than £9000. Medical courses for example.

I agree with what Littleham says. If you have a child that does like to go out, then allow more. Ours has £600 a month in London. She has her full loan entitlement but that is just less than £5000 pa and the halls were £8000 for self catering so we made up the shortfall on that too. Her loan will be £42,000 for the 3 year course.

I've just realised that OP on this thread is the OP on the Personal Statement thread where she said DS "refuses to do voluntary or paid work".
Somebody needs a kick up the backside!

Tuition fees - £9k per year.
If parents can't/won't pay up front then there is a loan available to all students to cover this.
Interest accrues from the moment the loan is taken, but students don't have to begin paying off their loans until they earn a certain amount.

Accommodation and living expenses.
The costs vary.
Halls of residence have all different price ranges, depending on the university (some are notoriously more expensive than others) and the type of accommodation.

A word of warning; students don't always get their first choice. This can mean being offered Halls outside the students' means.

If parents can't/won't fund this then there are loans. However, they are means tested. Often the loans do not cover accommodation, let alone living. Parents are expected to top up.

We reckon it costs another £9,000 for accommodation, food, books, clothes, gym.

dotnet - "Fees in France for university courses amount to about £200 per annum"

This is really misleading. There is a huge market for private HE in France (Grandes Ecoles and all sorts of other less grandes ones) and some Prépa (which don't even confer any kind of diploma) costs EUR 18,000 per year (x2)...

The basic maintenance loan is not means tested. The additional grant is. I guess I am a parent who won't pay up front. Your child may never pay much of the loan back so why pay out £27000 per child or even £36000 if they are not so likely to get a well paid job? I would say we are well off but our DDs have loans.

Panicking here. Dd will get loans but as a household we just fail to qualify for a grant. I was hoping she could live on loan plus some part time work. Also I bought children's bonds when she was small which are worth about 3000 so I was thinking 1000 top up a year would be plenty. Have yet to sit down with her and do the sums, but I honestly could not afford to give her top ups. Do people simply not go to uni because of the cost?

MillyMollyMama - I think many parents don't want the loan to act as either a disincentive to investing in a well-paid career or as a millstone around their DCs necks when they are young and have mortgages/childcare and very little spare cash.

The maintenance loan for living expenses is means tested IIRC. However, there is a basic amount everyone gets whatever their parents earn.

cooroo the maximum loan available for students living outside London in 2015 is £5700 and change.

I think you can go on the website, in put your details and work out what loan you will get.

From there you can work out what top up you will need to provide( if any).

Certainly there is a growing number of students who live at home and attend their local university to avoid high living costs.

Cooroo - I know quite a few students who only put Bristol or UWE down on Ucas so that they can live at home, as it is the only way they can manage their finances. Some of them live at home for their entire degree, but others go into halls for the first year to make friends and then live at home.

Another increasingly popular alternative is for bright teenagers to apply for apprenticeships leading to a degree (paid work with an element of study involved).

A third way would be to take a job during a gap year and save like crazy.

Cooroo The maximum loan is not enough to pay for accommodation plus living costs. There are grants and bursaries available at every university for the less well off to supplement the loan, but I guess if your income precludes a state grant you may be above the limit for those.
As others have said the ability to work part time depends on the nature of the degree course and the location of the university. It's often easier for them to work and save a bit in the holidays if they already have a part time job in their home town and can go back to it.

To be pedantic, the fees for French universities are indeed around 200euros/yr.

All other HE institutions charge higher fees, such as those mentioned by Bonsoir, and all other HE institutions are allowed to select at entrance, unlike universities which then cannot function properly and are on the verge of bankruptcy.

The French system is an utter, utter shambles and only continues thus because the political classes don't go to universities (well, except the dimmer elements amongst it, like Sarkozy), don't send their kids to universities and daren't run the risk of ending the current system which would increase youth unemployment figures exponentially.

Thanks secretsquirrel. She has a Saturday job but it's term time only! Off to google student jobs in Sheffield.