Year abroad - funding

[Pinhoe]

I wondered if anyone can help me get clued up about how this will work. DS has a place to study for his third year in EU country (replacing, not in addition to, third year in Scottish university). He is English student on 4 year undergraduate degree. I believe that fees there may be lower than current UK fees. He may be eligible for EU citizenship, we are in the process of applying. Do we still get funding via Student Finance England? Do we still need to pay full or reduced fees at his Scottish university? This isn’t a compulsory part of the course. I’ve looked in the University website but not sure how it will work?

Don’t know much about this but am 99% certain that uk student finance does not cover overseas placements. You privately fund them or there other schemes (Erasmus, I think) that provide bursaries and loans. You still have to pay a reduced fee to the college in the UK for that year (about £1-1,500 ish) which I think may be covered by SFE, but DC needs to speak to the university to find much of this out. It should be explained in the paperwork/website links they’ll have been send by their uni?

I'd try his department administrator first, they should know which section of the Registry can advise on this.

Thanks - have asked DC to check emails/talk to dept etc just trying to get a sense of amounts likely to be involved.

You can verify this by calling Student Finance England but he'll be able to get an overseas rate of Maintenance Loan which is higher than the UK-based loans.

Tuition fees - confirm with uni but likely to be a massively reduced fee to the UK uni and no fee to the uni abroad.

Turing funding: is very complicated so advise your DC to make contact asap to ensure he applies for it. With this funding he should 'hope for the best' (i.e. that he gets it) but 'plan for the worse' (because he might not and it might not be confirmed until shortly before he's due to go).

Student Finance England also have a Travel Grant which is means-tested but you can't claim both this and some elements of the Turing funding.

It's very likely that the uni does placement funding talks so he should find out when they are and go along to one. The talks may attempt to cover work placements in the UK and study and work placements outside the UK so it can be complex to understand even after attending a talk. He shouldn't hesitate to follow up with the relevant university teams to check he's understood everything correctly for him.

What I've heard is you still need to pay a third of the tuition fee to the Scottish university but check as it depends on uni and course.

Check uni website. Here is Edinburgh's for last year.

https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/tuition-fees/find/undergraduate/2024-2025/study-away/ruk

Note if not part of your degree you can ask to intermit and do placement. DDs flatmate did that and avoided fees.

Just had a google and see that SFE does fund at least part of it, but that there are Erasmus and Turing schemes that also may contribute to finances. I think as others suggest, DC needs to speak to uni registry to find out whether any of these schemes apply and then speak to SFE?

Yes it is still SFE , the tuition fee may be lower. Not sure EU citizenship changes this as funding stream is usually determined at start of the course. They may qualify for Turing funding but this is often not available until later during the year and prioritised to those studying mfl, on a mandatory year abroad and those socially or financially disadvantaged.

@PearlStork thanks that’s useful - I wish they had also published 25/26 data at this stage but at least that gives me a starting point. My DC seems to think 25/26 might be significantly worse (for us) which wouldn’t surprise me.

I wouldn't be surprised if Edi charged more next year ( they've been rattling the begging bowl despite their surplus). I don't think you pay at the abroad uni so it can work out positively eg SciencePo or UCal (but I guess for these accommodation swamps fees anyway). DDs department and the GoAbroad team were good about advising about costs (don't go to X unless your parents are loaded and willing to splash the cash as accomodation costs £££).