Cost to parents of university

[jennylamb1]

DS is looking to do Computer Science at university. The RG university on our doorstep requires AAB, which could be a reach, whereas another, which would involve living away from home, is BBB for a decent Computer Science degree.
With an approx 70k household income he would probably only get a 4.5k a year maintenance loan. How much would it cost to live away from home at a Home Counties Uni?

Check clearing for your local Uni as they may accept lower than AAB in practice although your DC would need to get those grades predicted. Surrey had some cheap accommodation in the first year, don't know about when living out. When looking at accommodation cost consider the number of weeks as well as the cost per week, an extra few weeks soon adds up. The minimum loan is enough to live on once accommodation is paid for.
Don't consider a different subject just to get a lower offer.

My daughters accommodation is more than her loan

Most is unless the student gets full loan.

i think the pp meant that the student lives off the minimum loan and the parents pay the rent. It’s the most common set up.

Save our Student is your friend here https://www.savethestudent.org/money/student-budgeting/what-do-students-spend-their-money-on.html

It seems to say £1187 a month for South East or about £10k for a 36 week year
so that's £5k shortfall but remember they can work in their 3 month summer holiday and 1 month Easter holiday+ in term time. I give mine £1200 a term, he earns the rest. He is always going out for dinner and visiting his girlfriend in Germany, so I think it's enough!

Also remember you won't have to pay for his food or his clothes or his extra curriculars which all add up

Computing is a great career. And young people need to branch out, find their own way.

@Blushingm
If on minimum loan this is enough to live on AFTER accommodation costs have been paid NOT including accommodation. Sorry if you thought my post misleading.

I pay all of my DC’s costs. It’s costing me nearly £2,000 per month. This is my budget for next year:

9,535 course 2025/2

6,900 private rental, yr2

5,200 allowance of £100 per week

=====
21,635 total budget for 2025/26

This doesn’t include train fares home which are approx £65 per return journey.

I also pay for DC’s phone.

Every time they come home they return with approx 10 x frozen dinners; spag bol, stew etc.

I’ve spent about £300 this academic year on store cupboard stuff: sauces, beans, pasta, washing powder, bleach, etc.

There is a financial offset as they are no longer taking 2 showers per day, eating everything in sight, creating mountains of washing, leaving every light on, or need picking up.

Nope, I’m not rich, I’ve returned to full time work to pay for all of this. DC has a job lined up for summer and does a lot of work around the house; painting the shed, jet washing patio, clean the car, cleans the windows. DC hopes to get a job next year, they’ve found the 2nd and 3rd year students have all the jobs.

@Kelta Exactly that.

My dd does get full loan. She gets just over £12k loan but her accommodation is over £13k

In which case I'd expect you'd pay the £1k excess and then her living costs of about £500 a month during term time.

Or (although it amounts to the same thing). She keeps the equivalent of the minimum loan to live on. She then puts everything else towards rent and you top up the missing part. Its exactly the same though.

However she has chosen a university that has massive rental costs. This should be a factor when choosing where to go. We pay about £7k pa rent

Were there no accommodation options at less than £13k? It is unusually high.

In many places you’d get self catering halls for under £8k. Even fully catered (3 meals a day) and en-suite is less than £11k at Durham.

Uni owned accommodation usually has shorter rental terms - maybe 40 weeks. Some of the private halls are 50/51 weeks and that can be why the total cost is so high. You and the kids have to be savvy when choosing.

Personlly, I wouldn’t be taking the full maintenance loan and taking accommodation at £13k which would then mean substantial top up over that to cover all living costs. It seems a massive burden to the student (future payments) and to the parents too - who presumably don’t have a high income if they qualify for full loan.

I do wonder if actually some of the students doing degrees at less prestigious unis which might not get to such high paying jobs, end up paying the most for their time at uni. Maybe more end up in private halls which charge for more weeks. Maybe more feel they must have en-suite etc and maybe are less savvy at choosing carefully or knowing all the options and costs which applying to uni and firming. There’s a massive difference in cost if £6-7k accom and £13k accom.

Well you are clearly very well off. And it is completely unnecessary and a choice you have made since presumably your child is eligible for a student loan which would have paid the tuition fees plus given them minimum maintenance loan.

Its fine as a choice and some might say its very sensible since it prevents the child from starting out in life with a large debt, however its not something most people can afford to do (or need to do)

In Scotland so no fees
We pay £1100 a month to each to cover rent and expenses
No loans
They do not work term time

We paid rent and they had the min loan for living. Both daughters away at the same time was a bit of a squeeze financially.

The biggest thing - which we had not factored in- was the second year rental deposit. Usually round about xmas/Jan. On top of paying that month's halls rental.

@jennylamb1 coming at this from another angle. If he could get the on the doorstep AAB grades would he want to live at home? He would have a lot more money if he took the minimum loan as he wouldn't have the accommodation costs or laundry. He might pay toward his food.

In your shoes I would show him the maintenance loan amount for next academic year which I believe will be £4915 (from Ds's 2nd yr application he completed the other day) and show him the cost of the accommodation (Ds pays £8k for his first year halls) and then lay out what you can afford to top him up by. I mean I can give you amounts for food and laundry, other things like Amazon Prime, Netflix, phone etc.

What he could also do is look backwards instead of forwards. On any test he has completed already have they gone back over this in class and does he now understand what he needs to do in future to improve his score/grade? If he sat say the first paper again without looking back at it, how would he fair? That is the way to improve his grades up. This is exactly what my own children did for both GCSE and A levels. The higher the grades, the more choices he has.

It's been a while but when I was at uni most parents of children not getting the full grant/loan have them the difference between what they got and the maximum grant/loan. In those days people with a household income of less than £15k got all their tuition paid and more money on their loan. I think households between £15k and about £30k got some money off the tuition fees on a sliding scale. Tuition fees were about £1k a year, halls were £50-60 a week, which left £40-50 a week for food etc.

This really worries me as I have 3 kids who will all end up at uni (potentially) at the same time.

Whilst we earn a good income, we also live in the expensive south and no chance we could afford to fund 3 kids at £900 a month or even £500 a month.

We will of course support the kids as much as possible, but it seems an insane expense to parents and when my youngest is ready for uni we'll have just retired so will be living on a reduced fixed income. Still a decent income but not enough to cover everything.

@elliejjtiny it is very different now. I went to uni when there we no tuition fees and we got grants too.

The OP is on £70k household income so over the £62k ish minimum loan amount meaning her son is only entitled to the lowest amount. To put that into reality, for this year Ds gets £4767 loan, his accommodation is £7960 or £199 per week and he needs food and laundry at the very least. At his uni the lowest cost is £123 per week up to £250 per week.

Some unis have a sliding scale accommodation cost wise. Others like Durham the accommodation is all one price so for this September it is £7145 for a fresher with a shared bathroom. That is £183 per week. In catered halls that is £10,232 for a fresher with a shared bathroom. Accommodation costs are through the roof.

So some students know that they can only apply to certain unis if the parents cannot afford to top up. Some places are just ridiculously expensive like Bristol and Exeter.

DD is at Bristol. Her rent is £8k a year. Her loan is £4.5k. She has £100 a week to spend (32 weeks). So her actual costs are £11,200, less the £4500, making £6700 which she gets from me. She has had term time jobs from time to time but it’s hard to find a job that fits around her timetable. She works in the holidays. Her money from jobs is hers to spend (in reality, it plugs her overdraft).

Uni is expensive.

When our first went to Uni we looked at the price and quality of some of the accommodation on offer and knew that there was a better option so we purchased a BTL property and allowed him to live there rent free but take in two lodgers that he then charged rent to. A great win win situation cost us less per month than cost of student accommodation, the rental income meant that he did not need to get a job so could concentrate on studies and when he graduated we sold property at a profit.

But don't forget the "value" he will get from living away from home. In my opinion, that is priceless and I would always encourage a young person to move away.

I think it will become the norm to take a year out to earn some cash before going. It will also become more normal to live at home at least for years 2 and 3, particularly if you live in London where there are lots of commutable universities.

Yes, I do feel that the economic outlook for the UK is somewhat bleak given the present global climate.

I agree Kelta. If they work for a year and live at home they can save close to a full year of accom and tuition costs ready for the first year. And then there’s just 2 years of loans needed for distant unis - which many will have to go to, as all aren’t suited to London unis or in commutable distance. But I guess more will stay local too.

Probably going away for 3 years will become the preserve of the rich. More staying local, living at home for some of the course and then just doing a year in uni accommodation makes sense.

Plus unis need to rethink their courses as their numbers don’t add up financially. Probably some courses might become 2 years or certain types of degree will become much more locally based - ie a return to a bit of a 2 tier system with vocational stuff studied more locally maybe.

But these trends take time. The move towards more going to local unis, working for a year before going, and some just living away for part of the course is already happening and pronounced around London and some other urban areas. Middle class parents though are culturally attached to ‘going away’ to uni and feel sad at the idea of their kids missing out. But I’d imagine within 20 years the landscape will have to be quite different.