Financial support through university

[Plumpretty]

I am a bit confused about university finance and wondered if anyone can clarify. My children will only get the minimum loan when they go to university and I thought we, as parents, would have to make up the difference between minimum and maximum loan. We will just about be able to do this I think. However, on a Facebook group I am on, some people do not make up the difference at all and expect their children to get jobs. Are parents obliged to help or not? Is it a grey area? I am reading quite upsetting comments saying things like it is the student’s uni experience and not up to parents to support them by topping up their loan. But I thought it was?

We pay accommodation and dd lives off the minimum loan.
We are expected to contribute about 5.5k according to govt figures.
Accommodation alone is 8k a year so to enable her to stay we pay for that.
She's struggling to get a job that has the flexibility to fit with her uni hours.
She doesn't have much of a social life compared to freinds that do work though as she has little spare money after food and transport.

@fluffyhoglets so you pay for all the accommodation? That means you are topping up about 2.5k more than government expects? Is this normal? We have been saving up but not enough then. Thank you

You don't have to top it up but the government expects you too, that's why they don't get the full loan

You are not obliged to top up but the government expects it and if you don't they'll have to get a job - our kid's loan covered their rent - we sent them £70 a week which between us worked out was enough - they then topped up with wages/summer job - one £70 was more than enough - the other had always spent up - on top of this we paid for clubs/memberships etc....

eldest last year did a year abroad at uni in Malaysia where she got a bigger loan amount and the cost of living was so low we didn't need to supplement it, currently on a year in the industry and saving up for her final master's year where she'll also be living with my sister so we shouldn't need to subsidise her then, but we will see.

for the last 4 years, we've had two of them at uni at the same time, which is something else the government ignores.

Some parents will and some won't. Some parents will top up ££££ and some will only be able to afford a small contribution as they have multiple children at uni at the same time or other financial restraints

The government expects parents to top up though and if they don't the child has a worse experience, works too many hours, potentially end up dropping out or getting a poorer mark than if they could focus more on their studies.

The system presumes that parents top up to the full loan amount. Legally parents aren’t obligated to pay the parental portion. Since the loan amount is based on parent income, it’s not a kind thing to do to your child. The calculation says that the parent can afford to help, even if it stings. Some parents refuse and the student has to struggle to get by.

even with parents contributing, most students are going to work at some point during their university career, even if it isn’t for the duration. It might just be on breaks, but they will pick up some work to get some extra cash because just the loan amount is very tight living. That makes it extra hard on students who have to make up the parental shortfall.

You are not obliged to do anything.
When DDs catered Halls are taken off her maintenance loan she starts on minus £6000 so even if she were able to get a job (her lectures are 9-4 most days) she would have to earn quite well to make that up.
Luckily we saved for her for the last 3 years so she has some money and we top up around £500 per month as well.
If we didn't or couldn't she wouldn't be at Uni, end of

Not all courses would allow jobs but depending on the course, the child could take a gap year and save several grand for uni to help ease the financial burden.

We will definitely be topping up to the maximum loan amount as government has calculated that our child only gets minimum loan. But why doesn’t government insist that parents top up because it is surely not right that student is awarded loan based on parental income and parent then refuses?

I see your point but it would be hard to enforce, plus not every parent can actually afford to top up to the max as outgoings are not taken into account, just income

Because it is the child's choice to go to university and incur that debt etc?

Because the parents can't afford it, even if the government thinks they can?

Because the parents don't think their child has the work ethic to make it worth them going to uni?

Because the parents want to teach them a life lesson about what things cost?

Because the parents are still paying off their own student loans and that's not taken into consideration?

So many reasons! You can't force a parent to pay for another adults choices (because ultimately, this is what it is). My parents never helped me out at uni, despite being worth more than £1m on paper (and pretty cash rich too - I used to do their accounts for the ). They encouraged me to pick a uni close to home, live at home, then pay them rent. Our eldest is now at uni and whilst we send him what we can, when we can, we just cannot afford any more. We have 2 other children at home, we have debt, and our mortgage has gone up by nearly £600 a month with the interest rates what they are. That's without all the other increased costs. He also failed his first year (he didn't get a job until around April time, so can't really blame working on how he performed) - so that's a whole extra year we would be forced to support under your rule when he chose to go out partying all the time.

However, on a Facebook group I am on, some people do not make up the difference at all and expect their children to get jobs. Are parents obliged to help or not? Is it a grey area?

The calculation of how much the student gets, is based on resident parent's household income, so the theory is that parents then top it up to the full amount.
What happens in real life however is it is a broad brush that doesn't cover the circumstances of so many families. A big element being it doesn't cover where you have more than one dc at University at the same time. So there are many, many families that can't suddenly find and extra £5K a year to support their child (or more if you have more than one student).

Of course, getting a job is good for so many reasons other than money, and also, many students still need their own earnings on top of a full loan. Accommodation costs have rocketed over the last 10 - 15 years, along with the cost of living rises in the last 5 years, but student loans haven't. So it isn't an either / or situation.

Oh, and if it is WIWIKAU you are on - it got rather taken over by so many parents with rather extreme views, it lost the excellent concept that it was when it started, so I'd take a lot of things posted on there with a pinch of salt.

You're planning on doing the right thing. You are, as parents always have been, expected by the government to support your child through University. Those who don't support their children are very vocal about not having to do it but they are simply justifying their own behaviour.

It is a lot of money though, and what's annoying is that it is mainly accomodation costs. I checked what the grant was when I went to University and used the BoE inflation calculator and in real terms students receive double what they received when I was at Uni (graph from HoC report).

It's not always that easy to just get a job. At best it can take time. In some cases, if the course has a lot of teaching hours and/or scheduling changes week to week, it can be tough to get any job at all. For this reason I think the bare minimum a parent can do is ensure the child has enough to pay rent and bills and buy food each week. Money from a job could pay for socialising.

DD gets minimum loan and some money from her dad - those 2 sums together only cover about 85% of her rent. I make up the rest and give her a weekly allowance for food and a bit of going out money, but it's not generous and she still needs a job (which is hard for her to find).

If the government INSISTED and made it law that we topped up our dds loan, then we would be looking at losing our house.
Just because the calculations state a certain income means the loan is smaller, it will not take into account outgoings, parental savings (lack of) debts, other children, and so many things.
We do what we can, and luckily, the university she is at has a lower figure than the govt for help, and she has received a bursary. She also has a guaranteed holiday job, which she has to take to stay afloat. Lucky, yes.

You have a very naive view here however.

Worth remembering @Plumpretty that the max loan in England is, due to not reflecting the higher levels of inflation in the recent past, around £2,000 lower than where it otherwise would be. And lower by a similar amount than the max loan for a student from Wales (although the set up there is that no parental contribution is required as all can access the max amount, just the grant/loan mix varies dependent on household income).

@intheoldendays I am sorry you think I am being naive. We have saved up for years so that we can top up children at uni. We have not gone on holiday at all (since 2016!) and didn’t move house and take on a larger mortgage because we knew that, though it was affordable at the time, it wouldn’t be when our DC went to uni and we had to fund them. I have four DC and none at uni yet (eldest will start next year).

We do the same as others on here - pay her rent. In addition, she has the min. maintenance loan and a Saturday job. The maintenance loan has not increased in years, so really does not go very far, especially as rents have sky rocketed. Most of DD's friends seem to have similar arrangements, or have a regular allowance from (wealthy) parents.

It's like anything with a threshold, those just over the 61k household income are going to find it a lot more challenging to top up, than those with 80k or 150k

That's before you factor in regional differences in housing costs and other things like family size and timing of university. If mine both went to university at the normal age, one would graduate before the other started so it would spread the cost out. If one takes a gap year, or they were twins it would be very expensive.

How old are your DC? They need to start saving for University/HE as early as possible. If they are small, open a bank account and get family and friends to deposit money there instead of buying presents for Christmas and birthdays.

Where do you live? Can they get a PT job while at school? My DC were servers in a local garden centre and did Christmas shifts in various places.

There is a chance to earn a lot of money over the summer vacation between A levels and starting University. If they can not get a term time job that fits with their studies/other commitments they can get one during the vacations.

There are lots of opportunities for young people to earn money and it looks good on a CV.

The loan is getting to be a joke. We have been looking at university for DD to start next year and while we intend to top her up she will probably need a job as well (she'll only get the minimum loan). We have even ruled out some university just due to the cost of their halls (although I know private rent can be cheaper sometimes) as some are over £10,000 a year and not even the full loan would cover this amount so I'm not sure what students from lower income families are supposed to do.

Accommodation alone costs between £7kish and £9kish depending on where they go to university. Then they need to live.

The most common set up where only the minimum loan is available is that parents pay the rent and students then live on the minimum loan.

This is why living at home after year 1 and commuting in is becoming increasingly popular

The other factor is that jobs are really hard to find. Zero hours and the gig economy means its very competitive and employers dont like students who are only there during term time and whose timetables change regularly

I top my son up from minimum to the same amount that his friend's get on the maximum loan. I don't think it's fair he should get less just because I earn more. However I don't pay his accommodation as that would be unaffordable. His accommodation is £7,000, our top up is £5,460.

However I don't top my daughter up. I give her some but not the full amount. That is because she is 23 and we already paid for her to do a year of drama school in London where I had to pay both her fees and rent. She has decided on a change of career but we hadn't budgeted for having two of them at uni at the same time. She took a couple of years out and worked full time prior to starting her course.

It's why my daughter accepted Liverpool, not Brighton and why my sons friend applied to Sheffield, not Brighton.