Should to pay your child's course fees?

[MollyHuaCha]

Just that really. Students now start repaying their loan once they earn more than £25k per year.

If you can afford to fund your child's course fees and living expenses in order for them to avoid taking out a student loan, should you do it?

Any thoughts...???

Totally agree Evelyn

needmoresleep you cant assume your daughter will come back to London. Many students choose to stay near their medial school and she may ultimately look to buy a home there. Once she's experienced how different life can be in a major city outside London she may never wish to return. It's not impossible to buy in London with parental help.

I'd suggest anyone who can afford to pay fees puts down a deposit on a student house to use from year 2 onwards , funding it by letting other rooms to their friends. There are mortgages that allow for this.

I wouldnt quite say the love of money was the root of all evil but its certainly a lot of it. Money is a means to an end - best used on what will give you a good life. My personal view is that in the long term having a home of your own instead of being stuck in the rootless life of renting, with no security, makes for a more comfortable life. So if you can only do one of funding the deposit or paying fees I'd opt for the deposit.

Still it's not just a personal choice, you might wish to give your student child some say in this decision.

I'm considering crowd funding or helping dd find sponsorship in the future. Lots of different subjects attract funding from individuals and/or organisations.
There are always these options.

It's a tricky one.

The interest rates on the loans are horrendous. I certainly wouldn't borrow money at that rate.
But then the terms are good - don't pay if you're not earning a certain amount.

The truth is that the ones who will get walloped by this are those on a reasonably good wage, but not a high wage. They will pay for a long long time and far more than they ever borrowed. If they marry somone in a similar position, it will be an absolute bugger.

That said, most parents simply cannot afford for their DC to leave university debt free. So that's that.

People who can comfortably afford it are paying.

maryso your post is utterly bollocks on so many levels it would take longer to point them all out than you took to write that load of factually incorrect nonsense!

For a start in which universe is the minimum wage for under 21s £10 (tax free following your calculations) pounds per hour? It's £5.60 in the UK.

Your comments about "the rest of the world" are puzzling too? Which country symbolises the rest of the world for you? I live abroad in the EU and there are no tuition fees for undergraduate study where I live (and private schools are also rare and generally only used by expats and people who want non mainstream pedagogy).

evelyn since you are so conversant with detail, you and all the other bean counters will have worked out that the would-be student can simply work longer and do so during their course. That does not change my point.

If you are happy using other people's monies to pay for something you can pay for yourself later, or indeed have no intention of paying, then your opinions are completely bollocks to those of us who pay our own way or wait until we can pay. The EU is a very small part of the world, actually, but clearly you've never looked at a map.

Wow Maryso. Are you always this rude?
Evelyn is right in terms of figures.
People are putting out the economic facts - obviously it is up to each individual what they choose to do once they have all the facts - well, those who have the money to give them that choice.
The system in the UK is now set up so that students can get the education at 18 and then, those that can will pay a lot more back into society later on, in taxes. The vast majority of people don't have the cash lying around to pay for the course upfront, in the way the vast majority of home owners take out a mortgage because they need somewhere to live before they would be able to save up the cost of a house. Even if you went out and earned £14 000 or so you would from a min wage job, you still have to pay tax and then living and commuting costs so you are talking rubbish about the amounts you could potentially save.

In the US you know from the day that baby is born you are starting to save for the college fund. in the UK we had no such 18 year warning, did we?

We must have had a very savvy financial advisor, as when the first DC was born in 1998 he strongly recommended setting up a college fund - he even chided us that we had waited until DC was born as he reckoned we had wasted 9 months.

backforgood I simply had to put it in language terms that evelyn could understand. As usual, bullies people who dish it out cannot take it themselves.

Yes of course everyone makes their own choices, and has their own opinions. People in the UK (and rest of the EU) earn more than most of the world.

In the EU sales tax is 20%. That would be a good starting point for graduate taxes for unpaid debts. Economic behaviour may even change.

People in the UK (and rest of the EU) earn more than most of the world.

I don't understand the relevance of this point given that most people tend to stay in the country they were raised in. Surely earnings are relative. We're all aware that people in some countries live on a pound a day but that's not really relevant to the debate here.

maryso what on earth are you talking about?

What do you think you are "dishing it out" that I "can't take"? That sounds like something a 9 year old would say!

It seems you have a very Laissez-faire political / economic views which you want to push, but trying to argue that everyone paying at the point of use for all services normally provided at least in part by the state is a very niche and at root deeply antisocial, regressive approach to society and community.

I assume you would turn down life saving NHS treatment for your children if you were not in a position to pay for it and there was a risk of it being very complex and expensive, and believe there should be no education or health services paid for by the state at all? That is the logical inference to draw, if you hold true to your ideals about paying your own way or waiting until you can pay.

evelyn again your assumptions are, in your language, bollocks. Do you think university courses are the same as life-saving treatments? Education in the UK is free until tertiary level, as is essential healthcare. If, wherever in the EU you live, they choose to subsidise more heavily than the UK, that's the democratic will. Your level of 'logic' is really rubbish btw so whatever you deduce is not worth the time of day.

titchy people do not just study in their own countries. When they choose to study here, they pay what it costs. Just as, if you choose to study elsewhere, you play by their rules, regardless of how little you earn compared with them.

Yes.mary's but surely part of the reason for the state subsidising student loans is that it gains from typically higher graduate earnings and the consequent payment of more income tax by graduates....

We must have had a very savvy financial advisor, as when the first DC was born in 1998 he strongly recommended setting up a college fund - he even chided us that we had waited until DC was born as he reckoned we had wasted 9 months.
Our midwife said "good job you've left 3 years between them, you'll be paying for them to go to uni by the time they go". 18 years ago!

Fees of £1k per year in England were introduced in September 1998, after we set our fund up, although I guess they had been mooted for a while - must admit it wasn’t really on my radar at the time, but DH is ever cautious when it comes to money (fortunately).

Do you think university courses are the same as life-saving treatments
Not all NHS patient costs are lifesaving though, most visits to health professionals are much more mundane. I don't think people volunteer to pay for them.
I do agree though that it is a distorted logic to only borrow money because you think chances are that you won't have to pay it back.

Are n't USA college funds pretax?
Money permitting, I would prefer to loan to my DCs and for them to pay us back depending on their earnings or by other services. I would offer them a much lower rate of interest .

Allthebest, I don't think your DS's payments will change? Unless the rules have changed your repayment threshold is fixed at the time you take your loan. I pay 9% of earnings over £10k. My DH pays 9% of earnings over £21k as he did HE 14 years after me. But my loan was far smaller than his.

And the Tories are increasing the rate at which new graduates start to pay to earnings over £25,000 not that that really helps a lot of graduates. Even my son when he was a post man was over that. Trainee solicitors in London are on £40k even before they qualify.

Frankly it beggars belief that anyone who can pay will not, and anyone who thinks they are likely to not be able to repay what they borrowed should even contemplate borrowing. There is nothing to stop you earning before going to university if your parents cannot be asked to educate you to the level you aspire and may well deserve as a human being.

wow! Venom in this comment.

Dh and I earn just over minimum wage, when I suggested university to our careers officer in school the reply was laughter and "not from this school".
Ds1 wants to be a vet, he will make a damn good one but by your thinking he should wait to go to university until he has earned enough to pay for it. (Fyi course fees and maintenance loan over five years is not far off £100k ). How do you suggest he saves this working minimum wage jobs? How many years do you think it should take? Maybe you feel only those from wealthy families should be allowed the opportunity to have an education?

Personally I feel education should be free or affordable to anyone who is capable but then who would you look down on?

Thankfully your opinion is so unreasonable all young adults who want to continue with their education are able to do so.

Whilst it's true that most graduates don't earn over 25k to begin with, I'd be interested how few didn't do so within ten years. All the while that horrible interest is racking up.

If a young person in university now isn't earning 25k in 2027 then the loan will be the least of their worries. No point giving them a deposit for a house, they won't be able to afford to keep one.

Apparently from today's papers the new system costs the tax payer the same as when fees were £3000 which is a fascinating fact. That means we increased them from £3k to £9k for now reason. All we did was give debt to students most of which they will never pay back but which hang over them.

Yes, and when people read 'most will never pay back, they think most will never pay anything.

When in fact it means most will make repayments but never pay it all off. It is essentially a 30 year tax.

As for say, those who will feel it most will be the next generation of the squeezed middle. Reasonably though not high earning coupes, paying out a chunk of money each month while they try to buy a house and raise a family and save for retirement. Their repayments coming to an end about the time their first child takes out their loan to go to university. Bloody awful.

drummergirl why do you think my comment has anything to do with you and your DS? I think it says more about you than me when you start talking about looking down on people. If I were to 'look down' on someone, it certainly would not be as crass as how well-heeled they were not.

You can feel anything should be free, however nothing is, because people's work has to be paid for, as do other resources. The question is how to offer opportunity that can be sustained and is acceptable to those who pay but may never have the chances your DS has. Vet med is well-populated by older candidates, it is not that usual for school leavers to get in without having spent time, and not just a few weeks at some practice, rescue, farm, stables. Most vets expect to repay their loans. So any venom you feel is something you have to resolve yourself.

maryso Many classroom teachers (especially primary, and especially women who take career breaks or go part time to have their own families) will never repay their loans in full though. Should they work minimum wage jobs whilst living "like students" for over a decade trying to save up fees and living expenses (both of which might well increase in the mean time) to pay up front in your twisted view?

I'd be interested to see evidence that it's the norm worldwide for students to begin their undergraduate degrees in their very late 20s or early 30s after having spent the intervening decade saving up.

Living costs for a student are between 8-13k per year according to Edinburgh university, so there'd be precious little to save after student level living costs and tax and national insurance (pension contributions are arguably more important than saving for a degree).

There would be no teachers and nurses at all if everyone thought like you.

No, they might not have to pay any/all of it back and you are better off giving them the money (if you can) to put on a deposit for a house which they might not be able to buy otherwise. The degree is an asset which they already have pretty much in the bag as long as they work hard whereas they don't have a house.

Some will no doubt come along and brag say that they are doing tax payers a favour by paying their child's fees but it's not a sensible financial decision according to several accountants and other experts I've heard personally or seen posting about it online.