Cost of a Master Degree

stardance

BEEJJ wrote: »

Hi,


At the moment my son is having to take out a business loan to fund a Masters - is this the best way of doing it?

You can get 'career development' loans. Also, many uni's have a number of scholarships and grants that can be applied for (obviously not a guaranteed source of funding but worth the time to apply in case!). Alternatively it could be self funded or your son could take year out to work and get the money, or majority of the money, that way.

I'm starting a MSc next month and have funded by taking a year out

melancholly

BEEJJ wrote: »

I do know what I am talking about- I am just pointing out the somewhat inequality of being able to get funding for 4 years ( and we are only talking about loans here) in some circumstances and not others. Why should it matter if the course/degree is different? It is still 4 years of loans!

well if you want to cry unfair, why are medical students allowed 6 years of funding? why are language students who study abroad for a year allowed it? why are students who do placement years allowed it? etc etc

i can't state it any more clearly than anyone else above, but it's because they are undergraduate courses.

i'd normally say that the best way to fund a masters is to take a year or two out and work and save for it. that probably isn't the best option with increases in fees however. the other option is to apply for funding from a research council - but there isn't much money there.

essentially, as many others on here have said and/or experienced, gaining a place on a masters course is easy relative to paying for it. it's important to make sure that spending that money is worth it.

melancholly

BEEJJ wrote: »

The last point is not true and irrelevant anyway.

on that you're wrong and i'm with TOW. if you do an undergraduate masters you get one qualification. if you do a normal bachelors degree and then a separate masters, you have two qualifications.

silvercar

I agree with OP. You can argue about whether you get two awards or one but at the end of the day its the masters qualification that counts. SO two ways to the same end, one fully funded one not.

If you do a 3 year degree and flunk one of the years and repeat you can get funding for the 'extra' year.

This just makes it worse - the reward for flunking one year is an extra years funding. But do well and spend the extra year at uni doing a masters and there is no funding.

melancholly

silvercar wrote: »

I agree with OP. You can argue about whether you get two awards or one but at the end of the day its the masters qualification that counts. SO two ways to the same end, one fully funded one not.

well everyone who does a 3 year course at Oxford or Cambridge gets it automatically upgraded to an MA with no extra work..... if you get into the details, there are lots of things that are unfair about it and this is one thing that's been set in stone for years. if you do a separate masters you don't go through UCAS and the type of teaching and student/staff ratio will be different to an 'undergrad' MSci.

the reason you get funded for one and not the other is because one is an undergrad course.... fair or otherwise, that is what the rules are and how they have always been. it won't be changing any time soon either!

there's two choices; accept the rule and move on, or get worked up and waste energy on something that won't be changed....... i see no purpose in complaining about something that isn't new, has clear guidelines and really only impacts on engineering and chemistry students (in the main).

(and the reward for an extra year of funding is a higher loan to pay back....just to put that in perspective!)

Oldernotwiser

silvercar wrote: »

I agree with OP. You can argue about whether you get two awards or one but at the end of the day its the masters qualification that counts. SO two ways to the same end, one fully funded one not.

If it's an undergraduate masters it counts for very little more than a BSc; it certainly doesn't carry the same weight as a post graduate degree.

BEEJJ_2

stardance wrote: »

You can get 'career development' loans. Also, many uni's have a number of scholarships and grants that can be applied for (obviously not a guaranteed source of funding but worth the time to apply in case!). Alternatively it could be self funded or your son could take year out to work and get the money, or majority of the money, that way.

I'm starting a MSc next month and have funded by taking a year out

His Masters at Exeter in Finance and Management is approx £9000

BEEJJ_2

there's two choices; accept the rule and move on, or get worked up and waste energy on something that won't be changed....... i see no purpose in complaining about something that isn't new, has clear guidelines and really only impacts on engineering and chemistry students (in the main).

(and the reward for an extra year of funding is a higher loan to pay back....just to put that in perspective!)[/QUOTE]



It's not complaining - it's pointing out some students could have many years of funding and others a lot less that's all. There is always a purpose in challenging the system - that is how things get changed.


And if you don't get student loan funding you have to take a business loan which you have to pay back IMMEDIATELY when you finish regardless of whther you are in employment or not!!!!!

Oldernotwiser

BEEJJ wrote: »

It's not complaining - it's pointing out some students could have many years of funding and others a lot less that's all. There is always a purpose in challenging the system - that is how things get changed.

And it's been pointed out to you that there's a difference between an undergraduate and postgraduate masters which explains the difference in funding.


And if you don't get student loan funding you have to take a business loan which you have to pay back IMMEDIATELY when you finish regardless of whther you are in employment or not!!!!!

This, I'm afraid, is absolutely wrong. Nobody would take out a business loan for a masters and no bank would give you one. The appropriate finance is a PCDL, whose repayments need to start within two months of finishing the course (not immediately) and it's often possible to delay the start of repayments if the borrower is unemployed.

BEEJJ_2

See these are my thoughts for change.


Given the new fee/loan structure to come in next year...

Have a maximum number of years funding available to students- . But adjust the rules slightly DEPENDING on what level of degree they actually get, so that maybe you pay back at a higher rate once you earn a higher salary. So in this way you will be able to get funding for some POSTGRADUATE study. This way would also have the added effect of stopping students wasting years by not working hard enough as they would effectively 'use up ' a year of funding when they had to repeat a year. We need to remember that it is 'loans' we are talking about not 'free tuition'. And we need to incentivise the hard-working students instead of rewarding the not so hard- working ones.

And before anyone jumps in with the exceptions for people from poorer backgrounds- keep the current rules.

The application process for a masters is more rigorous than for undergraduate study anyway so I don't think you will get that many time-wasters