What is the most the poorest student pays in fees and the minimum grant + bursary?

jacques_chirac

Dunroamin wrote: »

Students aren't supposed to live on their grants, they're intended to top up and replace the student loan for students from families who cannot afford to help support them.

Perhaps you can clarify your agenda on the subject.

This seems to sum it up - the OP thinks they can sign their loan agreement 'under duress' and then claim it has been missold.

I thought I'd heard it all - I was wrong!

Dunroamin

jacques_chirac wrote: »

This seems to sum it up - the OP thinks they can sign their loan agreement 'under duress' and then claim it has been missold.

I thought I'd heard it all - I was wrong!

Oh right - just another nutjob!;)

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Explain please Dunroamin.

I suppose you might be the type also to think that someone like Max Keiser is another nutjob or have never heard of him?

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Nat1990 wrote: »

I used to get the minimum amount when I was at uni (a maintenance loan of around £3500, or something like that). I received a grant of £500 (year 1) and £200 (year 2) and nothing in year 3 due to my parents increased wages. My parents refused to give me any money to subsidise me so I worked whilst I was at uni. My loan did not cover my rent so I had to cover the rest of that and my living costs by getting two part time jobs. Oh and I still managed to get a first class degree! I would have killed to get the amount these two examples get

Useful example Nat, but they aren't "getting" anything that you didn't. They are being lent much more than you and then being given token amounts of their own borrowed money back on some kind of drip which makes them think it's a gift. They are being lent enormous sums on easy credit with no thought for true affordability in the long run in a way that they are forced to spend on grossly inflated tuition and accommodation costs with favoured suppliers. Some of those favoured suppliers (the universities and their accommodation partnership privateers) are then permitted to use words like "national scholarship", "bursary" and "fee waiver" to describe token cashback amounts which you say you would have killed for. Would you kill for a £50,000 or £60,000 or £70,000 (who knows?) loan balance at 6% pa and climbing (interest rates can only go up) at this point in time ? Maybe you would. I could have a loan balance of four times that amount tomorrow if I went out and used my existing credit on something I wanted but actually I know I can't afford it so I won't, even though there is a chance that if I applied myself totally to the task of making it work, I could probably survive. But I still won't do it because I don't need to spend that much on the life I want. Do young people with no income know they can't afford these sums on credit? Of course not because they are being told exactly the opposite on MSE AND they are being told that to get the life they want they need to put their doubts aside and take the loans because they aren't really loans!

I met a real nice guy the other week with two European passports whose parents were originally African asylum seekers in European country #1 but moved to European country #2 while he was a young boy.

He did his A levels in the UK a year earlier than most. He is now already studying medicine in Asia completely funded by European country # ... #1 or #2 ?? - can you guess ?

I'll give you a clue, it isn't an obviously broke and broken country like UK and it isn't a country which discriminates against where in Europe or Africa or Asia or within UK he lived while he studied for his A levels.

silvercar

He's already paid £4,000 from his summer break zero hours job earnings for university promoted accommodation out of the £9,000 he must pay for just 40 weeks accommodation this year.

Please name and shame the university where the cheapest accommodation likely to be allocated is £9,000.

I know some universities will have accommodation at that price, but I doubt (happy to be proved wrong) that that is the sort of price expected to be paid for anyone who didn't choose a more expensive accommodation type.

Prothet_of_Doom

My son has Full Maintenance grant, plus maintenance loan, plus where he is, he gets a cash bursary, from the university of £1400 in 2 installements at the start of 2nd and third terms.

Living in halls, he saved £2K in his first year, and in his second in a student house saved £1800.

He does shop well and batch cook, and has a reasonable social life.

The secret is a fixed budget weekly and sticking to it.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

I daren't name and shame the universities in these cases because that would start to make it far too easy for someone to mischievously try to identify the students. Suffice to say the one that charges so much is a university that makes it look like the accommodation is its own but when you get down to it, it is one of the parasite privateer companies working "in partnership" with the university. I couldn't believe the size of the down-payment they required so early, or the fact they were introducing stress into the equation by demanding settlement of such a high proportion of the rent up front a month ago at threat of the accommodation being reallocated, although I can't imagine too many were queueing for it at those prices. They haven't moved in yet of course. The 40 weeks doesn't start yet.

You say you know some universities with accommodation at that price - perhaps you would be in a better position to name and shame them, silvercar? But you understand that part of my criticism which says that the scheme is rotten because via government-backed guarantees unaffordable home loans are being targeted (by coercion) at zero income young people - exactly the main problem that brought down the financial markets in 2007/2008 except there was no age bias but a race bias in that one (e.g. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and demarcation in places like Detroit). The fact that loans for the former are for paying rent and for the latter were for house purchase is irrelevant. The US victims' claims on the accommodation were doomed to be transient from the outset and all those US homes are now being bought up for a song and even offered to UK investors as a way to make a 10%+ return on the back curve of the original deal, same as UK investors are being offered guaranteed 10% plus returns on the front two years (only) of the latest accommodation project funding wheezes.

The most seemingly most generous scholarship I found the other day involved some tie up between Unite the Union and the accommodation provider. To get it you had to commit to staying in the accommodation for three years. Not sure what that was all about.

And my other accommodation gripe was the quality issue. I am sure you also know, silvercar, of universities who are marketing substandard accommodation of a type no-one even on benefits would be permitted to live in where children were concerned - and yet still at outrageous rents. These "children" we are making take enormous loans to fund substandard accommodation have barely turned eighteen yet somehow it is acceptable to say !bang!hello! - your rights as a single adult have now kicked in on your birthday - sorry about that - no the state will no longer pay for a decent roof over your head while you need it, instead you will become a hostelised adult and will be lent a large sum of funny money you will only see fleetingly before you pay to it to the university preferred hostel.

Then even if you become a bankrupt you will be linked to the upshot of the borrowed cost of that Dickensian (might easily be Dirty too if 7 or 8 strangers share a toilet) hostel at interest rates we are not quite sure about for thirty years. After that if you've made it that far, you won't have to worry anymore or if you are the sort not to worry anyway then you can drop out after uni and bvm around without having to pay so long as you keep yourself down below subsistence income or you don't mind paying 9% more tax than people who had rich parents who could knock the stupid loan on the head without blinking (didn't the government cave in to giving a special dispensation for the rich to pay back the loans anytime they like?) - whatever you do don't drop out during the course - that's totally uncharted badlands territory in Student Loan country! - I heard that you might immediately become a fugitive prey to private bounty hunters !

Oh, and don't expect to be able to plot any of this accurately in a spreadsheet unless you spend some days researching the smallprint. For some reason, no-one wants to talk about it other than in completely general terms.

Living in halls, he saved £2K in his first year, and in his second in a student house saved £1800.

That's commendable, but we must remember that you are talking about a student who was not asked to borrow and pay more than £3500 for annual tuition fees. There is still the age old MSE lesson to be well noted - you ain't saved anything if you borrowed it all first - it doesn't matter what labels you give it - loan (borrowings), grant (cashback), bursary (cashback), savings (borrowings not yet spent). It is the net borrowings position that counts and the various interest rates he is racking up e.g. if he has more than one bank or savings account and inadvertently incurs overdraft interest. Your son is not a country, but what he has managed where Osborne has failed is to minimise his "current account deficit". Good on him. He is still borrowing all that money albeit at the moment on the old repayment scheme 1 you could perhaps say he is treading water with the "saved" part of his borrowings if he really needs to keep those unused borrowings for a rainy day rather than pay them back immediately (if he even can? - I don't know the answer to that one).

D is for Dodgy and for Duress and for Dickensian and for Dirty

DomRavioli

More like you made it up OP. Name the university which charges £9k a year for the cheapest accommodation.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

It is not the cheapest, that was too dire and and no bigger than a mouse cage or a broom cupboard and they still wanted about £180pw for that! Even though this is a bit bigger than 20m2 it still doesn't have a proper bed or full cooking facilities (a microwave only) or proper heating (additional own portable heating is invited as cold winter experiences are admitted). There is no washing machine. You are expected to use their launderette at £3 a go.

The bed has a cheap already used by goodness knows who for goodness knows what and for goodness knows how long mattress on a hardboard storage box not on a proper bed frame. There is no freezer space just a small ice-making compartment in the fridge. The curtains are all heavily condensation stained and so are other fabric covered fitments.

This one has an en suite plastic cubicle thing for a bathroom like you'd get in a Cross Channel ferry cabin.

It was a cheap build and is now maintained on a complaints basis like Butlins maintain their rooms (i.e. you set your own standard and complain until they give you a room or a fix that you are satisfied with - at Butlins it has long been an accepted part of the game because as they will freely tell you, some of us have higher standards than others when we go to Minehead for a weekend).

So as you can see it is being rented out at what would be commercial rates for a proper fully furnished inner city studio flat if you could find a landlord in the area who would let 18 year olds rent such a space for fear of it being trashed. But it is much smaller than the smallest studio flat in the "professionals only" market that inner city landlords target unless they are organised student loan parasite corporates.

Why do we suddenly expect our most promising students whom we nurture in proper accommodation up to age 18 to suddenly have to slum it ? Because actually we have p-poor uncaring standards that's why.

P is for P-Poor
D is for Duress

And on what basis do you dare to accuse me of "making it up" ? Honestly, the number of naysayers in this particular forum is depressing.

Twopints

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Explain please Dunroamin.

I suppose you might be the type also to think that someone like Max Keiser is another nutjob or have never heard of him?

Is that the Max Keiser that said he would base the entire economy on Bitcoin?