A third of UK students now planning to live at home

[born2bme]

Interesting stats here showing the cost of living impact on students:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70gy180e8lo

A third of new UK students now planning to live at home.
Nearly 10% of new Open University students are school leavers.
And "most" full time students reportedly working in term time.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner you only get the full loan if your parents are willing to support it, if they don’t you get the unassessed rate, which is the minimum amount for the maintenance loan.

The problem with cheaper halls is that everyone wants them.

my dc went to a London uni and the cheaper halls he wanted everyone else did aswell!

Yes a lot of unis dont really let you pick, you put a preference list.

The problem with the max loan is your parents only have to earn 25k for it to start reducing and it doesn't take into account a parent might be supporting another child at the same time so its not just parents choosing to not give thier children enough.

Poor students with a full loan are often better off than students whose parents don’t give them the money

Sadly, it seems nothing has changed. This was the case even 50 years ago in the days of grants. The most well off students tended to be those with divorced, but rich parents. The worst off had rich parents that didn’t give them anything to live on. A couple on my course had to drop out because of this. My mother made up food parcels for a friend of mine whose parents lived in a stately home.

Still far fewer student living at home than in European countries. The UK is a bit of an anomaly in expecting student to move out a rack up debt while they’re not earning any money. Bit silly given the current cost of education.

It would also free up rental properties of university cities and potentially bring rents down.

Looking at Dublin accommodation is a bit of an eye opener. Rooms for rent with bunk beds and still extortionate sharing.

How depressing.

My dd falls into the poor student with a full loan category. She got her first choice & its a Uni with really generous funding for poorer students.
We both realise how fortunate its turned out for her, her insurance of Bristol would have been very difficult with accomodation costs, she was preparing to beg for a deferrment or reapply next cycle, to work and save money.
Im not really in a posistion to help much & that doesn't feel great.
We live in a city with good Universities but she did want to leave, my friends dd planned on staying here as family finances leave them in that awful crack of not much maintainance loan, but 2 other school age siblings etc.
Parents just can't spread it everywhere. She's missed her grades for our RG uni & has now gone through clearing for a much lower tarrif course & uni. I feel desperately sorry for her, as she's very low about it all.
If uni accom could be capped & student borrow at least part of accom costs, but I'm guessing with most loans never repaid, its a lot to ask of the public purse right now.
I think living at home works really well for a lot of students but its hard to think of young people not going to the best place for their course due to funding.
I dont know what the answer is but something needs to change. My home city has rakes of new build student accom ( we have 5 unis) but with overseas numbers falling & many students staying at home, I wonder who the developers/Uni's think will eventually fill them? We lack housing so I suppose thats an alternative.

I agree the costs are eye watering but I think it’s good for both the student & the parents to live away for a bit.

The issue is that universities invested in more and more luxurious accommodation options because that’s what young people say they want yet that means expensive! The en suite rooms always cost more yet they also get requested first. I shared a room in my first year, today’s young people wouldn’t be up for that.

staying at home is a perfectly legitimate option and for lower income households makes a lot of sense, they can always move out in year 2 if they go into a cheaper house share

If going away from home for 'uni' is so beneficial, why aren't we encouraging the 50% (and rising) of young adults who don't go into FE to leave home?

Do remember though that commuting isn’t always an option, my dd would have but the nearest university to us (only 9 miles as the crow flies) is 1 hour 40 minutes by public transport and dd cannot legally drive (seizures). We do not live in a remote part of the country it’s just university isn’t in the city centre and buses from us (an hour) run only to the city centre then it’s 25 minutes plus the wait to the university. If she could have driven it still would not have been an option due to strict parking restrictions in that city

There are no universities near us apart from one very poor one so DS couldn't have lived at home.

They will just use the student accommodation if it's empty for asylum seekers, it was on the list of accommodation to use

That’s very sad.

We have suggested to DD that sge looks at Universities within an hour or so, with the view to living away fir the first year, then commuting after that. Foetunately the hour covers a quite a few options (plus shes aiming for Primary Teaching, not sonething specialised)

I think it’s different because uni is an experience as a whole. It’s about the parties, the societies, the group living, the atmosphere, the whole thing.

Doing a degree is a solo activity. Sitting, reading, studying, writing.

Working is a group activity. You have colleagues and workplace banter and it’s a communal activity.

Telling a young worker to move out is isolating them (unless they move into a shared house which could be encouraged - but they already get social from work so it’s not filling as big of a void).

Telling a student to work from home and stay home is isolating in comparison. They are not experiencing the fullness of uni.

Someone working is experiencing the fullness of working. Most workers don’t go out on a Wednesday night. They do live in a home environment.

@Threetyy agree

This is one of the consequences of the student maintenance loan not rising in line with inflation/cost of living increases. Even the max loan may well not pay accommodation costs never mind food, etc. jobs are increasingly hard to come by.

sadly it’s students from less well off families who will potentially suffer. Wealthier parents can fund their kids. Others not so much. If a student needs to stay at home and lives somewhere with a good choice of commutable universities (and they get a place) then that’s ok. Other students may only live in commuting distance of a university with not such a good reputation. Or maybe it doesn’t do the subject they want and then they’re stuffed.

I saw this the other day. Friend of mine her dc is going to Dublin and she was saying how limited and expensive accommodation is…..I think he hasn’t found any yet and starts next month. I looked out of curiosity and it was like £270 a week for a shared room with bunk beds!

blimey, I thought Manchester was expensive enough!

There are lots of European countries where it is the norm to attend university close to home. Considering the cost and quality of student accommodation, it is quite a premium to pay for ‘the experience’ which is often not all that it’s made out to be. The attraction of going out and partying all the time is not the same for this generation, perhaps initially for freshers but it soon calms down. For a start they cannot afford to drink and party at the levels previous generations have. They are also more likely to be into their health and enjoy other things.

European dc often go to their local uni so everyone is in a similar boat & there often isn’t such a different between universities like here.

If it frees up housing elsewhere, because 2/3/4 years are in accommodation - and so fewer private rentals needed, that should be a good thing.

More properties on the rental market, so more available for people looking/ perhaps sell to social housing if long term struggling for tenants.