Student finance and high household income

[tinyviolinforme]

Honestly its so much pressure I can’t pull £8000 out of nowhere. We earn loads on paper but live in the southeast, disabled adult im caring for and financing, one gone through uni, one at uni, one due sept 2026 and I have had time out for caring, racked up some debt, why isn’t it just one standard maximum maintenance loan and you choose what amount to apply for? I’m sick of explaining to the kids what we earn, how much the mortgage is, how much the bills are, why we can’t buy them a car, why we can’t pay for ensuite halls etc etc.

massive mortgage for a shoebox, council tax £380 a month, I know we are lucky but this just is so stressful. No savings, they’ve gone on supporting the other kids.

please don’t all pile on about how I’m just venting , if anyone gets it please just let me know.

I sympathise. My ExH pays dd1’s fees and I pay her halls rent which is nearly £1k. My parents give her £400 a month for living costs. At the end of the month i start to get stressed as this month had £400 of costs i had not budgeted for. Once she’s finished dd will go to uni. I will be 56 once dd2 is done. I spend minimal on myself, it really feels tough.

This is why people plan and save! Why are the fees such a shock? Tuition has been at least £9000 since 2012, and maintenance will be ever increasing. Of course I believe people should be able to apply for maximum maintenance loan irrespective of their parental income, but this is nothing new. A gap year to earn, choosing a uni with lower accommodation costs or near home are options

It’s a completely shit system, most families don’t have the spare income to support an extra adults food and accommodation. It definitely needs a rehaul.

Exactly this!

Given that it’s a loan, and not a grant, it is a bit odd that the government should make this dependent on family income. However, I guess that most students, particularly those on full loan, never pay back anywhere near what they borrowed, so someone has to pick up the tab.

Giving every student full loan would massively increase government debt.

What would be the alternative though? Giving every student full loan would send government debt spiralling. You would have to drastically cut student numbers.

I am a mature student as are 70% of my course. Most work… almost full time. Many work all weekend and one / two weekday etc. For most degrees students are only in for 2-3 days a week most of the time. Even in my healthcare degree this is true until placements which become full time. I work in the gig economy, booking shifts when I know I have the time.

Your kids can find a few £k themselves by working.

I think having 50% of young people going to university in the current format is not affordable.

We should have only a small percentage of young people doing the traditional university route where you live away from home and don't really work at the same time. Everyone else should be doing apprenticeships, local university, online OU-type degrees etc. As a society we want an appropriate mix of educated young people but the university system is just too expensive in its current form.

I feel for you OP and for young people who are disadvantaged by this system. It makes no sense at all to base a loan for a 21 or 22 year adult on their parents' (or step-parents) income. It infantilises them completely.

I agree with this. There seems to be a lot of entitlement here. Why do you feel the need to explain the intricacies of your income to them @tinyviolinforme? They are your children, not your bank manager.

They’ll just have to get jobs like thousands upon thousands of students the world over.

I worked throughout both my Masters and PhD and I’m always surprised by just how many excuses people can come up with for not working. And then they wonder why they find it difficult to get jobs when they graduate without an ounce of work experience.

Why isn’t she working? Why are three households paying for her studies?

@MidnightMeltdown no idea what the solution is but I do find it unfair that education is for the wealthy. We have really struggled financially to put dd through uni, I know quite a few people who have had to say to their dcs that they will have to go to the local uni as they can’t afford to pay for them to live away from home. I don’t think that the current means tested system takes in to account the cost of living crisis.

@BelBridge I think because there’s this expectation that at income over £60,000 they get a parent top up I’ve had to explain what else we pay for and why I can’t hand over £6-8k every year. I hope that makes sense, I just feel the system makes it very difficult if you can’t find the money and your dc have this sold to them.

She works for herself tutoring. On a good week she earns about £130. If she’s had a good month she tells my parents not to send her any money. We don’t want her to have student debt but it’s not sustainable. I feel embarrassed by parents help but they insist and they enjoy taking her on holiday as well. I end up sending her money for clothes or anything she needs. I can’t bear the thought of her going without. I went without when I was a kid sometimes and so I think I project onto dc.

I understand that but you should only need to tell them once and they need to suck it up, life’s unfair and they need to move on and work with you to find a solution. £6000/year is a relatively easy amount for a student to earn - it’s £500 a month, 10 hours of paid work a week on minimum wage. They can do that-it’s not hard.

I agree that far fewer young people should be going to university, but now that the gate has been opened, it’s very difficult to close. No government will want to be the one to slam the door shut on thousands of prospective students. It would go down like a bucket of cold sick.

Not to mention the millions that Universities have spent on expansion over the past couple of decades, and all the surplus academics.

I don’t know what the thresholds are for parental contribution, but given that the government thinks that someone earning 50k is rich enough to be paying 40% tax, I imagine that they are too low!

Why are you paying for a disabled adult who is not your child? This is the first thing I would ditch.

Yes, it's awful, because some parents might just refuse to support their chlid if they pick a degree they disapprove of. And of course, some uni students get the maximum help as on paper, they have one parent who doesn't work-but in reality, they have spent their whole life living with that parent in their rich grandparents' house, gone to private schools and get given lots by the grandparents, but because their mum has hardly ever worked and is in receipt if lots of benefits, they're classed as much more needy than most.
This is NOT benefit bashing at all, just agreeing that the system isn't at all fair.

Absolutely do not do this. I was the third who had to change my entire career choice because by the time it got to me the money had run out. It had happened so often by that time, I wasn’t even bothered. It’s only later in life I realise how much it affected me.

I’m currently topping up my child’s minimum loan.

firstly try not to not to panic too much. You will probably find your household expenses go down when he leaves, think how much you currently spend on feeding him etc.

secondly the annual top up is currently just under £6,000. I pay weekly over the course of 44 weeks so it works out at £130 per week. Try and plan now, your young person will need to understand that they will have to get a job and there may be a few universities that won’t be affordable. For us it was Brighton due to the high rents but London might also be ruled out. But there are plenty of excellent universities in lower cost areas such as Sheffield or Liverpool.

one young person I know whose parent was not in a position to help took a gap year to earn money. My daughter went further. She worked full time for three full years before going to uni, this meant she is classed as fully independent and so she gets full finance plus a small bursary.

the system is undoubtedly unfair I agree.

OP - Not much help but all sympathy to you.

We have 2 DC at Uni (one finishing this year, thank fuck) and financially it is destroying us. The system is bullshit. On paper, our income is over the threshold for anything higher than the lowest maintenance loan but there is ZERO accounting for outgoings in SFE calculations. We have no disposable income and are just getting into debt. It's madness.

Both our DC are in basic accomodation and we still have to top up rent x 2 and it's virtually impossible for them to find work in big student towns at the moment. DD managed to find a waitressing job but they insisted on a minimum of 20 hours per week with shifts were finishing at 1am/2am every night and her work was starting to really suffer. DS was offered a part time job on zero hours and min wage (which he accepted) but so far he has been given the grand total of 7 hours in the last month.

The kicker is that most of their friends are on higher maintenance loans simply because they live in single parent houses. So ours get £4700 a year whilst their mates get up to £12K a year - despite having two parents earning decent money and almost certainly having more disposable income than we do. Our DC have missed out on a lot of 'Uni Lifestyle' through having no money - it's shit.

It's fucking ridiculous to assume that we can afford that level on input without taking our outgoings into account. Makes me so angry (hence the rant).

Sorry for derailing, but I am cross on your behalf.

The parents contribution element is BS. All students should get the same amount unless they want less.

We have twins who are freshers - the min loan of about £5k each doesn't even cover half their second year rent (£10,500 each) let alone living expenses. There is three months over summer where we have to pay for 2 lots of accommodation while their 2nd year houses sit empty - so we are paying six months (ie 2 x 3 months).

Why do all UK students have to live out of home for uni? Doesn't anyone go to their local uni?