AIBU to ask what parents on similar incomes give their children at university?

[MagnoliaPetals80]

I am looking for some advice from those who are helping their child financially at university. My DD is about to finish her A'Levels but had planned a gap year to work and save some money for uni. This week she has announced that she wants to go this year and the uni has approved this. She is determined to go whatever we say.

DH and I believed that we would have a year to save some money for her and that she would also have saved some money of her own and we are now trying to understand how it's going to work. She has picked an expensive city in the South East and is bad with money.

Our joint income is £65k or so and it looks to me like that means that she will qualify for the minimum loan amount. But we don't have lots of spare money. I know there are many variables but I'm interested in how much support you give your child (if you are able to support them at all financially). We think we could stretch to £200 a month but it looks like the loan might not even fully cover her rent. What's the norm these days if you are in a comparable situation? As I say, I know there are variables, I'm only asking if you are on a similar income.

Thank you in advance :-)

He wasn’t lucky. He did the police apprenticeship.

Very few of his cohort are still police officers. They got the degree and moved on, as did he.

It was a means to an end. That’s what I mean, there are so many ways to do things, even get a degree that’s transferable to go on to other things in life.

My dh needed a degree to progress in his career, so he did open university at 23 while working. There’s always a way.

And yet you are arguing that you haven't succeeded in life. Perhaps if your parents had helped you through university you would have done.

why are you so angry at me? My god.

And no, by the time I was 18, my mum was dead and my dad was a 68 years old. I wouldn’t have expected him to help me.

And who said I didn’t succeed? I had a good life when I was younger, but it was no thanks to the degree in politics. I did something totally different that didn’t need a degree, I wish I’d never bothered.

i did the same, got another job, cut back on spending, it is natural imo

If your mother was dead and your father 70 by the time you went to university you must have been entitled to a full loan so of course they didn't need to fund you. You were hardly in the same position as a student on a minimum loan today.

Christ almighty. What’s with you? Would you like a biography of my life?

I didn’t want to come out with debt. I was already working to help my dad pay off huge debts that my much younger mum built up before she unexpectedly died. He was desperate to hang on to the house.

I wanted to come out of uni with as little debt as possible so I worked and saved before hand and worked all the way through. I’d seen what the worry of debts does to a person and I’ve never wanted anything hanging over me like that, even when I was young.

Nor is it the parents fault .

Up to2012 the fees were 3k a year and then suddenly jumped to 9k. This wasn't the case when the current students were born

It can but it's not guaranteed. My brother just scraped through GCSE exams. He got and apprenticeship with a company, now worked up to area manager on over 80k

Many many people have degree s and earn nothing of the sort. Sister did eco obmics at LSE . She's earning32k a year in her 40s.

Another person I know has a first in law and earns about £10 a week over minimum wage

Stop criticising parents. The villains IMHO are the landlords (university & private) who charge such exorbitant rents to students who - in the main - have to take loans to pay them.

kids' clubs not really, because it's cheaper than childcare and covers the hours between school and work. Pets, well yes in the same way that kids are, but once you have a pet you can't really just abandon it to have an extra £60 a month or whatever for a child's university costs. The same as my younger children can't just do without meals because my older one is nearly uni age.

It's not the parents fault but unlike the child the parents know it is coming. The fees are irrelevant to parents as they don't contribute to that.

They didn't when they had the kids though

And rental costs have rocketed

And from the age of 14 the kids should know about the costs.

My DD decided against uni ( would've started 2012) due to costsThat's also the same cohort who started paying far more in interest than before

All of the current students were born before 2012

Obviously you can't abandon a pet if you already have it but I would consider the costs and whether that would impact savings for things such as university before getting one. Obviously if kids club is cheaper than childcare it is necessary but you didn't specify that.

I’d be much more on board with this stance if all 18 year olds were treated the same. It’s one thing for life to be unfair and quite another for your own government to set the system up unfairly. Some parents unwilling to contribute, some unable to, (but almost none meet the threshold for estrangement), but the loan is so ridiculously based on what is not a huge income in this day and age. It counts “step parents” income who may have raised the child like their own, or who may have only met and moved into the parents home after the student has left. It doesn’t count non resident parent income even if they are a high earner, have consistently supported the child, and have them overnight 49% of the time (or in practice, 100% of the time). It doesn’t account for other children, either at home or other student children - even if multiples. It penalises students of parents who work overtime and second jobs to try to make ends meet but UC and child maintenance don’t count as income in the loan calculation. To make it fairer we need to ditch the idea that 2 married parents working full time earning £6K a year each above min wage are privileged in the same way someone like Prince William was and 18 year olds who go straight on UC after school aren’t the responsibility of their parents, but students are for a further 7 years. Students who can’t find work aren’t entitled to UC in the way that none students aren’t. Apprenticeships are great but hard to get, both in general and outside of STEM. There is also the issue of location. If apprentices “counted” as students then they could apply nationally and move away into private student accommodation rather than having to move into an HMO with “proper” adults - which is an incredibly difficult thing to do logistically as lots of HMOs and private lets generally won’t let to 18 year olds.
The universities don’t help - insanely luxurious and overpriced accommodation and lots of pressure to book it before final offers day - low contact hours but changeable and spread about so it’s harder to work - ridiculously long holidays, which traditionally students could work in but realistically employers just don’t hire like that anymore - it will get even harder with new workplace protections. Nobody wants an inexperienced waitress or retail staff who can work Christmas - but not start until December 12th. Nobody wants to hire somebody in May who is 100% leaving in September. Only a few tourist towns want extra people over the summer. Students used to do farm labouring in large numbers decades ago - they don’t now. Min wage rises, regulation, NI increases and automation have killed off so many “casual” jobs and retail/hospitality businesses are going bust in huge numbers.

I went in the olden days - loans were replacing grants but fees weren’t in. My dad was dead and my mother didn’t give me anything but I had a loan and accommodation was relatively cheap and you could get a job by walking into any bar or restaurant and asking for one. It wasn’t the same.

Why didn't they know when they had kids? Parents have had to support students if their income was over a certain amount since the 80s. It was actually worse then as there wasn't even a minimum grant or loan. My parents had to pay all the maintenance costs.

Not to the same bloody extent they didn't. And don't forget many parents wouldnt have been to uni themselves or know people that did

As I said parents had to pay 100 percent of costs in some cases so actually they had to pay to a greater extent. I do agree that the governments should be clearer that parents are expected to contribute unless on a very low income.

But it was generally only middle class kids who went to uni back in the day. Much smaller %. Nowadays it's the world and his wife. In 1989 when I was 18 it was only about 14% of kids went to uni.

And what's wrong with letting the kids know when talking GCSE options about uni coats so they have years also to understand rather than just assuming mummy and daddy can pay?

Only one of my school friends actually went to uni and she did an access course after becoming a single parent to 2 small kids and worked up from there. She was 22 when did that but her parents weren't asked( and couldn't have) contributed

I went to university in the 80s too and not all middle class kids where I was at all. People were considered "adults" at 21 then rather than 25. I think they do talk to kids about finance options at school but I don't know what they say about parental contributions. A bit difficult to argue that parents aren't expected to pay when the loan students get depends on parental income.

The whole HE system is utterly f*cked. It isn't fair on students and families. It isn't fair on universities who lose on average £3k per year per home student since the teaching subsidy was removed, and a cap was placed on fees (and now need to recruit international students to subsidise the home students, so are giving international places at much lower thresholds, while government put in policies to make it harder for international students to come here) and it is vastly more expensive on the public purse than back in the day when loans were subsidised. It also doesn't work for academics, who have gone from working in the world's most revered HE system to becoming an international laughing stock, unable to compete with emerging models elsewhere. Most unis are making layoffs of hundreds of staff, to the tune of millions of pounds, so quality is reducing as the burden on students and the public is increasing. The collapse of most of our universities would have a massive and devastating impact on local infrastructure and economies. None of this is really a public talking point and there is no real political solution to it from any of the parties. Depressing.

It was still.a very small percentage of the population.

The school I was at didnt speak about uni at all. It just wasn't a thing for kids there. And I don't know any of my friends parents who had been. Most of them were in manual or service jobs. ( I'm daughter of a postman and shop worker)

So how would the parents have known about student finance?

From what my kids were told at school is that you get a loan that's doesn't need paying back until you earn lots. No mention of parents coughing up and it's a fairly affluent area

The loan shouldn't depend on parents income though Legally these" kids" are adults. Any other non uni going 18 year old i( not in education) isn't expected to have parents coughing up for them, so why uni students? And 25 is just bloody ridiculous. At 25 id owned my own home for years, worked full time for 9 years and had two kids.,( did my A levels at evening classes while working full time in day) .

And take care leavers. Despite the fact the local authority has been " in loco parentis) to them they almost always get full loans. The LA doesn't support them past 18

Although it was a while ago now, my 3 didn't take a gap year. They were all going to do sciences and they reckoned that as sciences can change fast, they wanted to start straight away.

I had just been through divorce (2 at uni, one still at school) with other half, we sat down and worked out what we could afford. The aim was to get as close to there being no student debt for any of them and we got pretty close to that but they had to contribute too by working while they were there. The one thing we hadn't planned for was that No 1 did a masters after his 1st degree and No 3 did a PhD so they blew the spreadsheet out of the window!

Our sacrifice was having less savings in later life but hey, education is the best gift one can give children imo. Good luck with it

Didn't realise that you were the thread police.
I've listed things my children did to assist with funding which might (or might not) help the OP. The OP is welcome to ignore them.
One of your posts simply blames private landlords - no help to the OP at all - so why are you 'chirping in'?

"Downsizing" ? So they can give their dd money (which she had once and chose to spend) for 3 years ?
Downsizing probably also means the dd wouldn't have a bedroom to come home to.
Downsizing (unless you are moving from a nice detached 5 bed somewhere to a 2 bed) is unlikely to release that much, once you've paid all associated costs, and would mean the OP and her dh would have lost their home for the rest of their lives because (one of) their dc changed her mind on a whim, and just expects her parents to magically produce some money for that ?

What a daft suggestion.

Is your bubble so small, that you don't realise
a) there are lots of parents that didn't go to university themselves, and would not have had any awareness of the costs
b) lots of people just didn't have the capacity to save for years before their dc went to university. So many people's budgets just about cover necessities. Even if they did cut the £4 a week it costs to go to cubs, that really isn't going to add up to a big cushion for sending a child to an expensive university.

Yes, I paid for 'activities' for my dc. They had swimming lessons and they went right through all the Scouts sections. They learned so much, and grew so much as people doing those things, the benefits far outweighed the costs. There's no way I'd have deprived my dc of the skills they gained, just to avoid them having to contribute to their own living costs if they went to University (and remember 63% of young people still don't go. So what a waste it would have been depriving them of all the fantastic experiences they had as children.