to start getting a bit worried about the cost of university, and to ask how much other people contribute to their children's living costs at university?

[Get0rf]

I know it is not an aibu but I can't really think what topic to put it in.

DD is 16 and in thinking about her university costs, I just wondered what other people contributed. Do people pay their rent and give them an allowance?

we don't pay dd's rent but we give her £100/week
she's in 1st yr and doesn't have a job at uni but it working at waitrose when she is home from uni.
atm she is overdrawn by about £300 because she had to pay a deposit for next yrs rent in a house share

she will look for a job at uni in her 2nd yr I think and then our contribution will be less...I hope

I lived at home. I got my student loans but my mum didn't charge me rent or board. I worked part time and was allowed to keep it all for expenses and going out etc.

I think she was awesome for doing that and I will prob do same with my kids

That would be a good idea kayano, but I don't think she would want to go to our local university (it isn't a very good one).

£100 - £150 a week sounds fine - I think I will just have to suck it up and it will be like having to pay childcare fees again.

Don't pay anything, DS2 has loans/bursaries and works part time, he is an adult now not a child. He worked flat out during the gap between school and starting university which gave him a cushion to allow him time to get a job to fit around his studies.

To be honest although it worked amazingly well financially (I live in Newcastle so a few good uni here) I did feel I missed out on a bit of the uni experience living in dorms/ flats with my friends.

As I understand it the tuition fee loans are non-financially assessed, but the living loans are based on parental income, and if you are above a certain level the available loan is less, and parents are expected to make up the shortfall, is that right?

Sorry to be a dunce, the student loans company website is a bit rubbish.

I know a couple of kids who are at university in Bristol and they commute from Cheltenham, where they still live at home

God knows how that works out cheaper with petrol costs, plus i always feel a bit sorry that they are not embedded in the student experience.

hmm not sure about that dd dealt with it all
i think she was a bit short on the rent ,but not by much
she also got a grant but can't remember how much
thankfully dd dealt with all the loan stuff etc
will ask her when she's back form work

I think it is increasingly difficult to just work through Uni now as there are few jobs available, let alone that fit. I went to Southampton and was lucky to live on the IoW at the time so I lived at home in folks' annexe and commuted via ferry. I worked, but was lucky to have experience already that meant I got an unusual job...shops etc few and far between. I had full student loan which with pay meant I could cover £2k pa season ticket and food etc, parents didn't charge me rent and I was waived tuition fees as I was older (23) so an independent student.

My parents gave my sister an allowance as she chose to live on the mainland in rented student accom, so they helped her a little, I think somewhere between £60 and £100 p/w.

I think your idea sounds sensible, I think if she is able to find a job/is on a course work fits with then you could revisit it then.

I have one DS at uni and he gets a tuition fee loan, and a loan for just under £5000 for living expenses. We also give him £50 per week, and he has money saved up from his summer job.

£200 a month from us isn't too much of a burden.

I shouldn't worry toooo much about being embedded in the student experience. To me that just meant getting wasted. I got a good degree but that was a side issue really. I could have had just as much fun being in my home town or working before studying or working and doing a distance course.

I did an MA part time so I could work whilst doing it. That was more fun and more enriching than my first degree as I had really good friends from work and from uni.

In terms of all the stuff like student politics, socials, clubs, that is just as accessible whether you are away at uni or attached to one near home town.

I earn less than 25k so my son gets full awards, that means he has over 200 a week income, from that he pays rent and food, it is plenty to live on for 38 weeks of the year.

My eldest just finished Uni after four years, I never contributed anything he also got full student loans/grants, he said he had plenty of money to live on.

It is possible if you are poor for your children to go to Uni without no financial support from you at all.

If however your income means they do not get any support then you have to support them because why should a child have to suffer if you earn over the top as it were.

I might add that my eldest buys expensive clothes and managed to do so on his Government grants and student loans.

Its called budgetting he also ate out every single day for two years cos he couldn't be arsed to cook.

I think a lot of parents try to avoid having their children leaving uni with lots of debt. That means paying out £10000 a year plus or minus for them.

We are not in this category. We believe in taking the maximum loans possible.

A good friend of mine currently has two children at uni; she is on a fairly low income and is unable to offer them financial support. They don't have to pay tuition fees due to my friend's income, then they support themselves with student loans and by working part time and during the holidays.

No reason why a person of that age cant work as well as attend uni. Lectures are often few and far between.

GetOrf I see it as an extra 4 years of childcare too. We pay DS's rent and he lives off (minimum) loan of approx £3500 per annum. He also has £500 a year bursary (at Manchester physics students get this for achieving A*,A,A at A level - not dependent on family income at all). He has overspent quite drastically this term! - and he has been told he's going to have to budget better. We are lucky we can bail him out. I do think that if a student is 'poor' s/he will be OK at Uni, likewise if s/he is 'rich'. It's the ones in the middle who probably struggle a bit.

DD is applying this year so will be hit with 9k tuition fees (scandalous). I'm on a low income so she will get the full grant, loans and bursaries. I've also told her to try and save up 1K working in the summer for extras. So she should be OK. If I was above the means tested income level then I would be able to help her out financially so I don't think it's fair to say you are OK if poor or rich but not in the middle.

The reason it is means tested is because parents with less than an average income just cannot spare £100 a week, it's about all I will have for myself.

adamschic, if you're on a low income then your DD will probably have her tuition fees waived. That is what has happened with my friend's DCs

My advice to her would be to go to the oldest richest university you can get into - they have the best subsidies and you can often stay in halls and so only pay rent during term-time.

Tutition fees can be 100% ignored - there is nothing to pay upfront and it won't start to be paid back until she is earning over £21,000/year, and when it is it will be taken out of her wages like tax so she will never have to actually think about it.

OP you want to be careful about putting her in a situation where she has to work loads. As trois says it's possible to work quite a lot and still attend lectures - but she won't have time to do the background reading which is the key to getting a good degree at most universities. I see a lot of my students stumble in for a 9am seminar having been at work at a bar till 1am and they just don't get the same out of it as the ones who aren't working.

She can take a gap year and work and save: that will help her. I did before my PhD and had a cushion of several thousand pounds which effectively paid my rent for 3 years. That was a big weight off my mind.

She can think about commuting to university: plenty of my students do this. University isn't an 'experience', it's an education. If she's serious, she can do without getting blotto every Thursday (or whenever Student Nite is these days).

She could think about going p/t. This is increasingly popular esp with mature students. It would mean she'd prob be taking 1-2 as opposed to 3ish modules a term (depending on what she does) and would need to commit to about 20 hours uni work/ week in terms of studying, writing essays, revising etc. It will take her longer to do but she might get more out of it.

There are all these options before you even look at Student Loans Co - who are notoriously crap. Try ringing them, they are sometimes more human on the phone. Also contact your DD's university student finance office or student services dept - when she has one - they may have some advice.

I cannot believe people actually pay rent and allowances to adults.

Then again I also can't believe that, unless married or having a dependent child, I couldn't be assessed on my own household income (mine and my partner's) but instead was still assessed on the income of my parents, and their partners and dependent children who had absolutely nothing to do with me, until the age of 25, despite having lived completely independently since the age of 18.

-chip on shoulder-

The system is shit but yes, with the current system of loans and grants unless you're a medical or similar student with a really heavy course load it's perfectly possible to exist on the loans and part time work. The fact that I had plenty of work experience on my CV made a huge difference when it came to applying for jobs, over friends who'd done bugger all while they were studying.

Oh and trills is right that you should check out how fees work - it's really not bunging down a cheque for 9 grand.

Getorf,

also - do not forget it also depends on the location and the "wealth" of the university. London living expenses would be very different from, say, Nottingham (even if you live outside the city, the tube/trains are very expensive). Also, the richer the university, the more "extra" grants and bursaries will be made available - think about Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which have reading grants, holiday grants, out of term accommodation grants on top of other government grants.

It's quite a difficult question to answer in abstract without any figures in hand; my "strategy" is that one should aim to the best university/course they can get into in terms of future employability, regardless of the cost of that particular uni. The loans may never have to be repaid after all - if the salary does not reach the thresholds or the 30 years limit is breached, then the loan is written off.

what trills said
DH went to Very Posh and Rich College at Very Posh and Rich University and his hall fees were buttons compared to mine