Going to a non-Scottish university

[Scotuni]

Our DD is going into S4 and I’m belatedly thinking about her future.. We earn over £35k so I know we would be able to apply for a maintenance loan of £4750 if she went to a Scottish University. But would we get this loan amount if she went to an English/Welsh/N.Irish University?

We are not financially in a good position (no savings/large debt after a period of unemployment) but on paper earning a good annual salary. I know ideally she should stay at home and go to a local uni but both my partner and I think that being a student is as much about learning to live independently and flying the nest as it is about studying. We both left our home cities in England and lived 100 miles from home.

I know we would have to get a loan for the fees in England/Wales N.Ire but is there a limit on the amount of money you can get in a loan for maintenance and accommodation? Or is there a cap and the expectation that parents provide the shortfall? Is the figure of £4750 maintenance only applicable for Scottish students who study in Scotland ie. if you choose an English uni it’s a whole other funding/loan system.

We’ve been burying our heads in the sand about this and I’ve been reading all the threads about how much people have saved for their kid’s future study. Have got myself in a state thinking about it all. This is my first step in trying to face up to the reality of it all.

If your DC is eligible for student finance then they’ll get the £4,750 even if studying outside Scotland but there is an expectation you will top up. Plus many students will work part time and through the holidays to top up there own income.

Re the student experience have you looked at the Universities in Scotland that are further from your home - plenty of Scottish students move away from home. If you are thinking of English Universities then factor advanced highers into your planning - though they aren’t always necessary.

As above, there is no reason she can't move out. If she goes very local then they may not give a guarantee of Uni halls (they each seem to have different rules) but you can still book private halls. You can also move hundreds of miles away depending on where you live and what she wants to do. We are in Stirling-shire and DS2 is going to Aberdeen. The £4750 will be applicable regardless but keep in mind that accommodation will likely eat up most, if not all of that. I think i worked out that if you were on low income, the bursary would top that up to about £7500. So I guess that's what they are looking at in terms of being enough. They can work in the holidays too and even part time while studying.

Going down south might mean the requirement for decent AHs but the course for a normal honours degree should just be three years, that will still be about an extra £30k of debt.

I wouldn't panic too much. Have a think about any costs you might save while she is away (reduced food bill, energy bills, transport costs, school uniforms, club/extra curricular stuff). She is likely to be away for 9 months out of the year. Plenty time to get some employment, even part time should allow her to save a couple of thousand to help see her through. So if you look at making the 4750 up to the 7500 then that's £2750 she theoretically need to survive.

Just as an aside, if your dad goes to an English uni there is no funding for uni fees. You would have to pay for these yourself, unless there is no similar course availablet at home. This is the reason my ds1 didn't go to Oxford. We couldn't afford the 9k a year.

Er, @Lesssressedhemum, you don't have to pay the fees upfront you get a loan from SAAS to pay it, although I agree it adds up to a scary amount once you add on the maintenance loan.

But would you have had to pay the extra £9k for your daughter to go to Oxford Less? Would it not be the case that she would have had to get a loan for those fees, it wouldn’t have come from your pocket? I guess it’s loading the debt on to your child rather than you IYSWIM? The Scottish system means as a nation its citizens who choose to go on to Uni will have less debt. At the end of the day do kids coming out of Scottish financed uni education with debts of say £20k (4yrs x £5k) have an advantage over non-Scottish students who will have debts of £45k-ish given that paying it back doesn’t kick in till you’re earning a fair whack? I guess the best placed kids, as ever, are those of parents who are rich enough to finance their kids throughout Uni without having to worry about getting themselves in debt or having to downsize to a static caravan somewhere

If you're going to an English Uni then SAAS will give you a loan to pay all or part of the tuition fees - so effectively, you'd end up with the same level of debt as an English student would acquire.

https://www.saas.gov.uk/fulltime/ug/young/fundingavailable.htm

The positive with SAAS is that the interest rate charged is much less than the rate charged by the (English) Student Loans Company. The negative is that SAAS requires repayments to start paying back at a lower level of salary than does the Student Loans Company.

At the time, no there was no funding for him, we would have had to pay the fees up front. It may, of course, have changed in the last few years but when ds was applying, there was no funding available for going to an English uni to do a course that was available here. We looked into it carefully and my dh works for the student loans company, so we did explore things thoroughly.
But, as I say, things might be different now.

I should have said that he was fully funded for a Scottish uni, as we are a low income household. We would have qualified for funding, there just wasn't any available because his chosen course was available in Scotland.

I've posted the link to the current SAAS provisions. Things have changed.

...but for sone train my link isn't working (copied and pasted from the relevant page )

....trying again

https://www.saas.gov.uk/fulltime/ug/young/fundingavailable.htm

From SAAS:

Tuition fees - study elsewhere in the UK
You will have to pay up to £9,250 each year towards your tuition fees if you study at a publicly funded college or university in the UK (but not Scotland). You can apply to us for a student loan to pay part or all of your fees. Your application for a student loan to pay your tuition fees is only valid for one academic session, so you must make sure you apply every year. We may not be able to give you a loan to pay your tuition fees if you have done a course of higher education before or if you have to repeat a year of your course. Please see our previous study section for more details.

If you are not sure what fees your college or university will charge, you should check with them.

That's good, then. It opens up more opportunities for kids to expand their horizons.
We were all a bit gutted that we couldn't afford for Ds to go to oxford. I'm glad other youngsters will get the opportunity now.

I'm retrospectively cross about that funding gap, I wonder when it changed?

But why on Earth would you want your child to have to pay back another 38 -37K when you have free tuition fees in Scotland? (am not in the UK)
Are English unis that much of a cachet in comparison?

Well not really apart from Oxbridge or places like Imperial.

Do they guarantee you an exceptional graduate salary? I just don't see why you'd want another 28-37k pounds worth of debt? Didn't Prince William go to Scotland? not that he was ever going to be in debt or struggle as a graduate

Well, I guess part of the problem is that due to the funding model, it's actually more difficult for a Scottish child to gain a place at a Scottish uni than it is for a RUK of ROW child. Obviously that's not true for DC who would be Oxbridge candidates. For example, offer rates for Maths at Edinburgh are something like 20% for Scottish/eu applicants and around 80% for non scots.

I did not know that wax That must be very annoying and frustrating.

Luckily both my DC have places so it's no longer an issue for me, but I think it is frustrating for some. Other universities figures may be different, and it does vary by course, but Edinburgh is the only one that I've seen published figures for.

I went to Edinburgh 30 odd years ago and it was like England in Scotland! I was the only Scottish person on my course. In fact, I was, for a while, the only Scottish person in the whole department. I was also the only state school educated person. It was very difficult. I can't imagine that much has changed.
Ds1 and 2 both went to st Andrew's uni and Scottish students were in the vast minority, as were state school folk. If you want to go to a uni where most folk are Scottish, you need to go to Strathie, Stirling, or other modern unis. The ancient ones are populated by overseas or English students because they bring large amounts of funding with them.
Ds1 wanted to go to Oxford because he could! And because of the prestige, really. People from around here scarcely go to uni never mind Oxbridge. It would have been a real feather in his cap.

Some real food for thought on here. Need to look into the different conditions /payback terms. Not sure what subjects they might (or might not) study at Uni. Who knows what the situation will be in September 2022?! Will the UK definitely be out of EU?! Will Scotland be independent?

On another note, would the SAAS, give loans to a student wanting to study in another European country like Holland or France?

I was talking to a young woman from Glasgow who studied at Glasgow Uni and she said a large number of her fellow students were from England (studying anatomy) and many were having their loans paid off by wealthy parents or not bothering with loans at all. She was from a state school, living at home and working many hours in a part-time job. I suppose that’s the case in many UK universities but there’s no doubt that the Scottish Universities are keen to have a substantial amount of students paying their full whack fees!

Looking at all the student accommodation going up around Glasgow, there’s such a huge economy profiting from both other UK students and those from other overseas countries. The changing face of Dumbarton Road in Partick is interesting to watch. Glasgow University seems a big commercial enterprise with so much money being invested into new campus buildings.

Also if your DD is Oxford or Cambridge material - then she may be better off than most other English Universities. This is because the Colleges often provide accommodation for all 3 (or 4) years, and you often only have to pay rent for term time not for 50+ weeks. There are also hardship funds and travel scholarships etc. although this is counterbalanced a little by not being able to work during term time.

Are Oxbridge students not allowed to work a job during term time?! Didn’t know that! I’m not sure my DD is up for Oxbridge - might surprise us! Reading between the lines what I’m hearing is that unless your child is going to Oxbridge there are more than enough fine Scottish Universities to cater for our educational needs? I’m sure that’s the case. Certainly on the artistic front Glasgow and Edinburgh have world beating Art Schools although Glasgow must have suffered with the impact of its 2 fires? Anyway, I’ve started thinking about it - I just need to focus on DD putting in the graft in S4. They say they’re going to knuckle down as it’s getting serious now 😁

I think it very much depends on what your DD wants to study! For example there is a course at Surrey University which is the best in the UK, and definitely worth any financial hit - similarly I can think of another and totally different one at UEA . And I'd definitely think her looking at courses and Universities in England (or Wales) could be a good idea, even if she decides she'd rather stay in Scotland.

When we were looking at Universities for my older DD, the Scottish ones all offered incentives to her as an English student (in part to make up for the extra year).

You'd have to pay fees in England.