University: weekly money needed as 'extra' in 1st year (catered accomm)

[GLVF]

Eldest went off to uni for first time yesterday. We briefly discussed what we'll give her as an allowance to live off for extras, but I'm wondering if this may need revising.

She's in catered accommodation fairly close to campus. So, the main costs I foresee are:
• 5x sandwich-type lunch (Mon–Fri lunches are her only uncatered meals)/occasional snack or coffee out (we did pack her off with snacks)
• evening drinking/clubs (but she's not a huge drinker)
• possible bus travel (unlikely, as fairly central to uni/shops)
• very occasional extras, like haircut/cinema.

We plan to help her separately with printing/laundry/books costs, so I'm really focusing on main weekly expenses throughout term-time. What kind of ballpark are we thinking in the modern world to help her start to budget without leaving her hungry/deprived?! Are there many things I haven't thought of?

Our thinking was – very simplistically – £5 x 5 for sandwich + snack/coffee during day, and £15 x 3 for nights out, which equates to £70/wk. It should leave a little extra, potentially, if she's careful, as she rarely drinks more than 2-3 drinks, and has plenty of snacks for the time being.

Of course this will depend on family circumstances and location of uni, but a rough idea from those in the know would be helpful. She's been earning a little (waitressing) throughout sixth form and is usually fairly careful with money.

Thanks!

It's not that I don't agree with the system.

What I'm saying is neither I, nor any of my friends got any money at all from our parents during University. We all worked through University to fund ourselves.

I don't know anyone who got money from their parents for Univeristy. We all worked to fund our studies.

So if your son or daughter gets any money from, that is very nice of you. I would say that its quite unusual. And they should be very grateful to get anything!

And in my experience it's not at all unusual, I got money from my parents, as did all my friends. Dd gets money from us, and all the people I know with Dc at uni now give their Dc money, so in my circles it is very much the norm.

And thats why mumsnet exists. To give the different perspectives of life!

Are you in a very wealthy circle, out of interest?

Because everyone I know, who were all from (if i had to define it) lower middle class backgrounds, all worked their way through University.

Though I had one friend who was from a very wealthy family, and she also paid for her own way all through University.

In my circle , "a good work ethic" and "once you're 18 you're legally an adult " and "it's good to learn to look after yourself"

Were definitely values that we grew up around

I'm from a very working class background, but would say middle class now, hence why Dd doesn't get the full loan.

That's an incredible amount for living off. Surely some of that should be going on accomodation!

So maybe it's just down to parenting style then.

Because my parents didn't give me any money at all, and that was normal to me.

I worked the summer before Uni started . I worked during term time, and I worked every summer in between.

And it was the same for everyone i knew. That's how we funded it

When i worked in the restaurant at weekends during term time, it was full of University students working there with me. None of us got the full maintenence loan, we all worked to top up the loan.

The idea of parents giving money seems so unusual to me! But if they want to, why not.

The students should just be very grateful that someone will fund them for three whole years.

It's different ways for different people.

@Abbylikeswine the two main factors you need to consider are (a) you probably weren't paying £10k in tuition fees plus £5-10k as a maintenance loan (not a grant) when you were working through term time (so if, worst case scenario, you fell behind / failed / had to repeat a year, there weren't such financial consequences as there are now) and (b) there hadn't been a COVID crisis where thousands of retail / hospitality jobs went up in smoke and there were far fewer students (so it's not quite as easy as it was for you and lots of other uni students to walk into restaurant jobs and the like).

I'm not disagreeing with you that working your way through uni was the norm (it was to me too) but it's a different landscape now.

You repeatedly fail to engage with the substance of the points made by others and just keep repeating your mantra that any level of work is reasonable and no parent should expect to do anything at all for their children once they are 18, @Abbylikeswine. Of course loads of students work - most have to do at least some paid work. Loads of students work far fewer than 48-60 hours a week at university even while fitting in paid employment. Loads of students only work in the university holidays. A tiny handful maybe don’t do any paid work at all for the entire duration of their degree. Many people consider a 48-hour working week to be full time work. You, however, have actually claimed in this thread it is reasonable for someone to work 80-hours a week on their academic work and to fit in a paid job on top of that, and indeed claim you worked these hours yourself as a student. You have compared teenage university students both with teenaged schoolchildren (I don’t know what sort of university you went to if you think schoolwork and degree-level work bear any particular resemblance to each other), and with non-student working adults whose employers would be breaking the law if they expected them to work anywhere those hours in paid employment. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if the law tries to protect people from exploitative labour practices, after centuries of people fighting for these rights, the majority of people in this democracy do not agree with your view of what level of work is “reasonable,” and you are in fact in a minority who would find those hours acceptable. Tbh, I find it a bit jarring that you took the maintenance loan at all, because that smacks of greater charity than your own parents were apparently willing to accord to you, and it seems a bit peculiar to me that you should be happy for the State to infantilise you with uncommercial loans whilst you agree with your parents’ view that you should be earning your own keep without their support.

I've spent a lot of time on wiwikau, which I suspect has a wider cross section of posters than the HE section on MN. There are a lot of posters who are very worried about being able to support their children. However, I don't think I've seen a single parent saying they will give their child nothing. If not in a position to provide regular financial help most posters are saying they would do a initial food shop and pay for more food or care packages at regular intervals. Parents are also helping in kind by providing household items, or providing transport or free board and lodgings in holidays.

Back in the day, there were grants and loans were more in line with what was needed to survive. It was easier to manage without help from parents. However, like today, I don't know many who had zero help whether actual money, or in kind.

I think there's dissonance between the pov of @Walkaround and @Abbylikeswine because one was talking about Oxbridge and the other wanting to move away from that.

It's a fact that Oxbridge is different because of the 8 week terms. It really does make a difference - the 8 weeks are very intense and it's really hard to work in those times for two reasons - when would you fit it in without exhaustion, and who wants to employ someone just for 8 weeks before they then go home for a long break?

I think it probably will next year.

I worked all the way through at the mumsnet hallowed 'Russell Group'. It was normal and expected (I did a science!) and almost everyone I knew did bar or restaurant shifts, or call centre work. You would have been considered a bit spoiled if you didn't. Loads of time. I did student politics as well.

My nephew is in the same university town now and also has a job. There are loads of unskilled vacancies all over the country in hospitality and retail- thanks to Brexit.

But- the friends I had at oxbridge didn't- short terms- they did however all have holiday jobs they did in all the breaks. So it's just when you work isn't it?

If my child was at Oxbridge I wouldn't be happy for them to laze about the house for literally half the year. They need to get a holiday job.

I think I would have applied for the Maintenance Loan, she does not need to pay it back until after she is earning a certain amount.

This. I was also wondering how people whose children get the minimum loan have money left over. My child has minus 3000 a year following rent payments. I'm a single income household. I'm having to take out loans myself to get her through. She'll obviously work as well but even so things will be very tight.

This is what is so tragic about our university system now. For a period of time it was accessible to people from any background, with any level of family income. We have moved back to it being just for families of a certain income.

If you don’t expect her to make packed lunch is £5 a day actually enough to buy lunch?

You are right in that the system is unequal, but doing it without parental support is often impossible and it's an example of working class trap.
Where we live the nearest uni "down the road" takes an hour and 20 minutes to get to by bus and rail, so local to some people will mean a very different thing to others. Remember that not all unis offer the same courses.
You are wrong about the volume of lecture time in non NHS courses, my dc's timetable shows 5 pretty full days starting 9am Monday morning, not finishing till 6pm Friday afternoon. It certainly wouldn't allow enough hours during term time to pay the £8k pa accommodation bill.

The system in one sense is the same as the 1980s when I went - if you parents are poor you get lots more money because the richer parents are suppose to (but not obliged to) make it up to the full amount. That is still the case. It has always been a weird system where you can get someone with the full maintenance loan having so much more money than someone with middle class parents who simply choose not to pay to to up to that full amount even though expected to do so. Yet the teenager has no control over any of that - how much their parents earn or if parents supposed to top it up failing to do so.

The Government quote above about being expected to top it up is the same as I got in the 80s - I posted it on here last year as I still have the local authority notice - saying every year some students complain a parent fails to make it up to the full amount and they encourage all parents to do so where the student only receives the very minimum.

In a sense there is a middle class trap not a working class trap. the poor get the full payment . it is the middle class with the mean parent who does not. In fact Labour sees the grants system as one of its successes as it has enabled so many more of the less well off to go to university. (Maximum maintenance loan is £10 227 outside London. Minimum is £4667.

The big difference these days is that if you are a student with minimum loan whose parents can't or won't financially support you, is that it's incredibly difficult, and in some cases impossible to make up the difference by a sensible level of part time work.

I think we will see the university model changing to one where more students have to take a gap year to save, or go to their local university (if one exists), or use distance learning. I've already seen this trend in my daughter's year (she's 1st year uni student) where the number taking gap years has increased.

I don't think its fair to say parents are mean! Your household income only needs to be just over £60k to drop to the minimum loan. In the good old days of low interest rates, energy costs and food prices those in that bracket had surplus cash that we spent on nice holidays and put in savings. Now? Our mortgage payments have doubled, we are paying 3x as much for household running costs and our salaries can't keep up with inflation. Holidays are long gone, so has the surplus of cash every month, so finding £600 a month for each child at uni is hard. Its not about being mean, its about not having it to give to them! I am looking at picking up a part time job to supplement my DD so that she doesn't go without but this will be really hard on my other kids, my day job etc. I am lucky that I am fit and well enough to work 50 hours a week but not everyone is.

We are a family that earns just over the limit so our YP are only entitled to minimum loan. Both myself and my husband keep up to date with educational issues so we were aware and planned for that. There are many first generation students in our area from traditional working class families made good (tradespeople etc) for whom this came as a shock and they struggle.

What we did not plan on however was having two at university at the same time. Our youngest is currently entering the 2nd year of a 4 year degree. What we didn't plan on was our daughter having a complete change of direction and going back to uni after just under 3 years working (and the just under 3 years is relevant as over 3 years and she would be classed as independent. She left college in July 2021 and for the first 6-7 months covid affected her work (her workplace kept getting shut down so we had to support her as she wasn't entitled to furlough.) Even though she hasn't lived at home since July 2021 she is still classed for student finance purposes as our dependent.

There is little to no allowance made for having ore than one child at university at the same time.

Malbec, good points although I am sure it was not easy for my NHS doctor father to afford to top our very tiny minimum grant up to the huge maximum one even back in the 1980s and plenty of parents said then they could not afford it or chose not to do so. Rents are higher now for students even after inflation. Although I compared my initial lawyer London salary when I qualified recently to what new lawyers in that big firm now get and AFTER allowing for inflation they get 3.5 times what I did so I don't think the past was some easy time where every one had loads of spare money. Some people today have more than we used to have.

I would certainly support reverting to only 15% of teenagers going to university as in my day (and only a third of those getting a 2/1 or higher) as it all seemed to work better then. I suppose the Scotland/England comparison is our best current data as they don't have loans but it is harder to get into university as a Scottish home student than English in 2024 to places like Edinburgh.

Youre talking a load of rubbish.

You wrote 'and with non-student working adults whose employers would be breaking the law if they expected them to work anywhere those hours in paid employment"

How utterly laughable.

You think people doing full time hours at University and working part time hours at the weekend is comparable to breaking the law.

Are you living in the real world at all. I genuinely think some people live in a tiny bubble.

As @nearandfaraway pointed out to you above, almost everyone she knew worked restaurant /hospitality shifts during University term time. She said that you would have been seen as spoilt if you didn't work

My cousin is in his second year of an Engineering degree, he works in Aldi one evening a week, and also at the weekends. My other cousin has just started a nursing degree. She works part time shifts in a restaurant. They both have full University schedules.

I think it's pretty spoilt to depend on your parents to fund everything, when you could work to fund it yourself.

Your last point that I shouldn't have accepted the loan is also laughable.

It's a loan, not a handout! I'm not given the money. I have to pay it back.

I wonder if the people who accept money off their parents, pay it back?

The problem is that whilst the junior lawyer salaries have increased by x 3.5 London property prices have increased by x9 - couldn't find the comparator for rent but they tend to follow the house price curve. So the new starter salary won't go as far as it seems on first reading due to increases in living costs. Plus a lot of new starter lawyers will be paying back their student loans pretty well from their first pay check so an additional cost to factor in.

I think I'd like to see more than 15% going to uni but I'd also like to see some degrees like nursing being turned into a more apprentice type model with learning on the job again, plus a pay check and subsidised accomodation on the job. It might mean that the degree was longer say 4 years instead of 3 in order to fit the academics in but they would be paid rather than borrowing so it would be worth it. If there was a similar model for med school it wouldn't be seen as second rate.

Once again, you are either failing to comprehend, or failing to engage and thus deliberately picking on sentences and woefully misinterpreting their meaning, @Abbylikeswine. It is not reasonable to expect someone to work for 80 hours on academic work and then work a great many more hours on top of that in paid work. As for repaying loans, pre-the recent changes, less than 30% of student loans were being fully repaid. Do you not understand the difference between a normal loan and a student loan? Tbh, I think you are full of shit and worked nowhere near 80-hours a week on your academic studies, and if you did do, plus work many more hours on top in paid employment, then I feel sorry for you, because you have said your parents could afford to help, but didn’t and there is no way you can pretend you also had time for a social life or any creative hobbies or pastimes, unless you are planning to claim there are more than 24 hours in a day, or that it is reasonable not to go to sleep at least once in every 24-hour period.