Parental contribution for Scottish students

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I have 2 children aged 12 and 10 and think I need to give some more consideration as to how we will fund them should they go on to higher education and live away from home. I know fees will be paid and they will be eligible for the lower student loan but how much do parents contribute per year to their student children?

If you'd both care to read my post, I said it's effectively a tax.

I am saying the attitude of simply comparing monthly payments and thinking that lower monthly payments are better is the attitude of people that use places like Brighthouse. I'd always look at the overall amount to be repaid.

Anyway, apologies again op! It's just a lot of people don't realise the interest rates are so high south of the border and always an option that your young ones may wish to study there.

Scots studying in England borrow fees via Sass.

Just be aware private accommodation can be costly once they move on in year 2. DD us Edinburgh, five if them wanted to share, so options restricted. A couple of options went immediately advertised. They were left with a £6000 per bedroom plus bills flat which to be honest I wouldn't want in, or £7500per bedroom plus bills, tiny kitchen and no lounge. There's obviously travel, food and student lifestyle on top. DD's student loan and our contribution amount to £9800. She's struggled to get a job but against the odds found one after lockdown, so now has money as a backup.

Like every other sector of society and the economy, Higher Education is facing incredibly tough times.

None of us want our young people to be saddled with more debt than they have to be.
A graduate tax for all students, including Scots studying in Scotland, is realistic and fair.
Higher Education is not free.

Could the current system for tuition fees/ student loans be better ?
Absolutely.

As for Brighthouse ?
I see the Scottish Bureau for Misinformation strikes again.

@MumofHunter, why does interest rate matter at all in this context? It seems to an irrelevant piece of information, unless you are in the bracket where you are JUST paying off the sum within 30 yrs.
What matters is how much you pay a month and the threshold. Only secondly, if not thirdly or fourthly perhaps, you look at
the total amount paid, if you manage to pay it off, and draw some comparisons.

Put simply- a graduate earning 50k pays back 80k over 30 years in England/ Wales and around 34k over 17 years in Scotland (IF they took full living expenses loan of 8k a year). This is due to no tuition fees / lower interest rate here.

I'm really done with this now. Have a good Monday all.

*just to be very clear the 80k is what they'll pay back. The rest is written off.

You can't get a living expenses loan of £8k in Scotland. That's the point people are making. Most students can only borrow up to £4750 and those on lower incomes can borrow up to £5750 with an additional varying amount of up to £2k given as bursary which doesn't need repaid. The amount awarded varies based on the level of household income. No one studying in Scotland can borrow more than £5750, most will be able to borrow less, regardless of whether they live at home or away and regardless of whether the parents top it up or not.

This is the point of the thread, OP and others will need to factor in these contributions as, other than an overdraft, most students have no way of borrowing more.

Effectively to bring students up to a level playing field, £3k per annum per student is required minimum. More depending on uni, so if you have 2 DC doing 4 years at uni, you'll need either £24k saved or the ability to fund £3k per student per year from earnings.

£34k household income is quite a low threshold and all these households will be in different positions in terms of spare income. Some will have large mortgages or debts and or other dc to support or uncertain future employment or whatever, but the point us still that the ability to attend university, particularly in Scotland, is still based on whether your parents can afford it or not and getting a place is limited by the fees being funded by the government and set at below £2k to the university. They cannot afford to offer more places.

The amount to be repaid at what rate and when is a moot point if dc can't gain a place or can't borrow enough to attend.

Ok, maximum is just shy of 7k a year for living expenses in Scotland.

I worked from 16 and all through university. Paid off my loan 6 years after graduating too. It's just I don't like having debt o/s.

Of course, every family's different. I thought you said your two were at uni WaxOn? And it is true that more Scots than ever are going onto higher education.
People like skills development Scotland do a great job in helping students move onto positive destinations.

Anyway, we've always saved child benefit but I'm thinking apprenticeships for mine as they're very practical and outdoorsy.

Still not sure what you are talking about with the amounts as you cannot borrow more than £5750 and for most it won't be more than £4750.

Well done for having a job and paying off your loans, having a student job or one after graduation is not a given especially at the moment.

And yes I have two dc at uni because we can afford to top them up. Not everyone is in that position, I'm allowed to empathise with and understand that.

It doesn't matter if numbers overall are up or down, the point is that actual dc have missed out because if the funding model. Edinburgh uni for example will publish their %of awards versus applications for subjects, split between the different application streams. I'll see if I can dig that out. It's sober reading.

I have basically told my kids they will need to stay at home if they want to attend uni

Here is the link and I know there are lies, damned lies and statistics and some of it will be about levels of acceptance of offers/various algorithms etc. yada yada yada

www.ed.ac.uk/student-recruitment/admissions-advice/admissions-statistics

There are links in the doc that give you stats for each category of student ad you can see the amount of applications, levels of offer etc

Just to give an example, I've chosen Informatics in 2018 for no other reason as that's when my son applied and for roughly that subject.

Scotland and EU - 1650 applications, 21% made an offer
RUK - 303 applications, 72% made an offer
RWorld - 1199 applications and 81% made an offer.

Granted not all will accept but you can't accept what you've not been offered.

This is all by the by as not really about the thread or anything, I just find it interesting. Other Unis might have very different stats but i've never found any published. I'm sure unis with less international profile will have very different stats as they will mainly be scots who have applied.

I pay DCS rent,and 400 /month cash
Also continue to pay phone/optician/dentist

SpanishPork check your figures. For a family income of 31k you get a £5750 loan plus a £500 bursary in Scotland so £6250. Plus high cost unis like edinburgh would give further automatic bursaries (£1k minimum). Agree it would be tight if family couldn't help out but just about doable (particularly if student works).

@ClerkMaxwell

Yep, £34,000 is now the figure where only a loan of £4750 is available.

So you have a family of two parents earning £17k each with two kids- so hardly rolling in it!, expected to fund a substantial part of university expenses. Hardly encouraging social mobility!

By comparison, each DC would he eligible for £8016 of support a year in England.

This might not show properly but should give current figures:
Bursary and loan amounts
Household income Bursary Loan
income £0 to £20,999 Bursary £2,000 Loan £5,750
income £21,000 to £23,999 Bursary £1,125 Loan £5,750
income £24,000 to £33,999 Bursary £500 Loan £5,750
income £34,000 and above Bursary £0 Loan £4,750

It's not hard to see why progression rates to university of those from poor backgrounds is so much worse in Scotland than England- people from poor backgrounds were twice as likely to go to uni in England in the masters figures I can see.

A DC from a family earning £24,000 only gets £6250 a year in Scotland- that would barely pay rent somewhere like Edinburgh. They'd be eligible for £9200 in England.

*latest figures

I'm surprised it's not a higher figure for RUK for Edinburgh tbh. My sister went there and hated it. Full of 'yaas'. Seems she did well to get in though.

That’s a shame for your sister @mumofhunter.

When I went to Edinburgh university, I loved it and the department I was in and the one my dh qualified at were definitely not full of yahs. A lot of my friends were from England and Scotland (I came across more Scottish yahs than English ones). We all have prejudices, even when that is reverse snobbery.
My dd1 is there and is enjoying her time. She has many more International and European friends than Scottish or U.K though.
When we dropped her off at pollock there was a parental reunion in the car park when a dad met his friend Dido (he needed to shout her name repeatedly across the car park to get her attention). It was very funny and their kids looked so embarrassed.

I suppose that’s part of what the melting pot of university is all about; meeting people and ideas you never normally would and making the most of the opportunities and learnings university presents to us.

What is a yaa/yah? I googled it but found nothing.

It's an offensive term for upperclass people Arkadia. A bit like someone calling a poor teenager a ned. But I guess that's okay...

I rather feel "it's a shame" for the folk who didn't get the opportunity to go tbh