Tuition fees case: Callum Hurley and Katy Moore lose

2sides2everystory

(Deleted..)

Taiko

Plus the fact that with all support for fees being available to all regardless of income, there's nothing unequal about it.

Could've saved a lot of time if they'd realised this.

kruzgal

Taiko wrote: »

Plus the fact that with all support for fees being available to all regardless of income, there's nothing unequal about it.

Could've saved a lot of time if they'd realised this.

I don't understand this response. I keep hearing Martin on tv and radio programmes saying that anyone that wants to go to University can afford to because they can get a loan and pay it back when/ if they earn above £21,000. If parents earn above £42,600 the student can not get a full maintenance loan (they can only get £3575) and unless the parents agree to contribute there is no way they can afford to go. Support is not available regardless of income - it is down to the parents' income and willingness/ability to contribute. Our son goes to uni this Sept. and having looked around many Universities the loan that he can get without our income being taken into account does not even cover the cost of accommodation. We are not high earners but have decided not to open up our finances to the student loan company and have encouraged our son to apply for the minimum amount and we will support him to meet the additional costs. I feel for students whose parents can't/won't help out.

callum9999

kruzgal wrote: »

I don't understand this response. I keep hearing Martin on tv and radio programmes saying that anyone that wants to go to University can afford to because they can get a loan and pay it back when/ if they earn above £21,000. If parents earn above £42,600 the student can not get a full maintenance loan (they can only get £3575) and unless the parents agree to contribute there is no way they can afford to go. Support is not available regardless of income - it is down to the parents' income and willingness/ability to contribute. Our son goes to uni this Sept. and having looked around many Universities the loan that he can get without our income being taken into account does not even cover the cost of accommodation. We are not high earners but have decided not to open up our finances to the student loan company and have encouraged our son to apply for the minimum amount and we will support him to meet the additional costs. I feel for students whose parents can't/won't help out.

Sounds incredibly dodgy - short of you pulling off some kind of tax scam, I have no idea why you wouldn't want to disclose this information...

You can easily find accommodation for around £3.5k in private rented houses. Bills would be an issue for most scenarios, so you'd just have to get a job - or live at home. The government makes sure everyone is able to go to a university, for a tiny fraction of people (I struggle to believe there are many students who live in a house with an income of £46k+ yet have no savings of their own and are completely incapable of getting a job) they may only be able to go to their local one and may not even get to do the course they want, but I'd wager that's well under 1%.

Derivative

We are not high earners but have decided not to open up our finances to the student loan company and have encouraged our son to apply for the minimum amount and we will support him to meet the additional costs. I feel for students whose parents can't/won't help out.

You do realise that in doing so, he may be missing out on non-repayable grants in addition to any loans?

Supporting him through the loans is commendable - missing out on free money isn't. I would be thousands of pounds a year worse off in non-repayable grants if my parents had done the same.

MusicalLawyer

Lots of people leave Uni because they cannot afford it.
Why would you not want to disclose you income to Student Loans Company to help your son?
He would get grants - which you don't pay back, plus a bursary from his University.

Your son will get only the bare minimum - £3500 ish per year if you don't.
That would be enough to cover costs of private rented, but not in Halls of Residence.
If your son is living in halls, you'd need to top up his accommodation (which is paid termly), as well as help him out with money for food, and study costs IE books (this is around £200 a term).
Not to mention that a lot of students I've come across at Uni tend to spend money their parents give them, at the SU bar, rather on what they're giving it to them for IE Rent etc.

Would be better for your son if he didn't have your aid with finances - that way it'd teach him to be more independent with money.

kruzgal

We have checked and there are no grants or bursaries available for people that earn just over the £42,000 limit. It just frustrates me when it is said that anyone can go - if we were not earning and were on benefits then our son could get access to grants/bursaries that would total more than enough to survive at Uni. Because of our earnings this is not the case.

Voyager2002

kruzgal wrote: »

We have checked and there are no grants or bursaries available for people that earn just over the £42,000 limit. It just frustrates me when it is said that anyone can go - if we were not earning and were on benefits then our son could get access to grants/bursaries that would total more than enough to survive at Uni. Because of our earnings this is not the case.

I refuse to believe that you have checked all of the thousands of different sources of student finance (many of which are for tiny amounts to top up the student's main source of income; many of which are specific to particular courses and people from particular places...). Anyway, your decision not to disclose your financial details to the Student Loan Company means that you will be assumed to be very wealthy.

Like other posters, I am puzzled why you are unwilling to provide SLC with your financial details. In practice you only tell them what HMRC know anyway, and their main way of checking the truth of the information given to them is to confirm it with HMRC. The process is relatively painless, and unlocks all sorts of little pots of money, in addition to the main means-tested loan.

As for your main point, I think it reasonable that better-off families make some kind of financial contribution to the education of their children. Even in the good old days of grants for all (when tuition fees were paid by your local council), the student grant was means-tested with a certain amount being specified as the "parental contribution". If full grants or loans were to be offered to all students, there would have to be a substantial increase in taxation to finance this: I suspect that your household would be worse off under such a system than you are at present.

silvercar

As for your main point, I think it reasonable that better-off families make some kind of financial contribution to the education of their children.

The student loan assessment makes no allowance for the expenses of the family, how many children there are to support, housing costs or commuter costs. If a family has income over the magic 42k then SLC deem they can support their student child. If they have high commuting costs or say 4 children in the family to support ( and housing costs to match having a home for 6), they may have very little spare cash to give to the student.

Dunroamin

silvercar wrote: »

The student loan assessment makes no allowance for the expenses of the family, how many children there are to support, housing costs or commuter costs. If a family has income over the magic 42k then SLC deem they can support their student child. If they have high commuting costs or say 4 children in the family to support ( and housing costs to match having a home for 6), they may have very little spare cash to give to the student.

A family in this position will have the money available which they've been supporting their child whilst at school. Now they no longer have these costs this money can be used for an allowance whilst at university.

Voyager2002

silvercar wrote: »

The student loan assessment makes no allowance for the expenses of the family, how many children there are to support, housing costs or commuter costs. If a family has income over the magic 42k then SLC deem they can support their student child. If they have high commuting costs or say 4 children in the family to support ( and housing costs to match having a home for 6), they may have very little spare cash to give to the student.

OK, let's hear your plans for the perfect system. Just bear in mind that if the assessment process takes account of other factors then SLC would have to ask for more information so that the application process would be longer, more intrusive and generally complicated. That would make the whole system much more expensive than at present, and of course there would be even more mistakes...

Alternatively, a system that was far more generous and had less means-testing would of course cost a lot more. Would you be willing to pay the higher taxes needed to fund such a system? (Personally I would be, so long as the bulk of the tax burden fell on those with above-average incomes, but not many people would agree.)