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

jayII

This is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever read. The OP is either blindly obsessed or is trolling really badly.

The worst off students are some of those from comfortable homes, whose parents earn too much for them to get full support but whose parents can't or won't contribute towards their support at uni. Those students will also have bigger loans to pay off than those who get full grants and loans.

Aside from that, all prospective university students should really take some responsibility for themselves and investigate the costs of accommodation before applying to particular universities. Or defer for a year to work and save, if they discover, at a later date, that the costs at will be too high for them.

They are, after all, supposed to be adults, not to mention being the intellectual elite of our society. Surely they can work such basic things out for themselves!

I'm out of here, I'm not into banging my head against a wall until it bleeds.

Dunroamin

jayII wrote: »

This is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever read. The OP is either blindly obsessed or is trolling really badly.

The worst off students are some of those from comfortable homes, whose parents earn too much for them to get full support but whose parents can't or won't contribute towards their support at uni. Those students will also have bigger loans to pay off than those who get full grants and loans.

Aside from that, all prospective university students should really take some responsibility for themselves and investigate the costs of accommodation before applying to particular universities. Or defer for a year to work and save, if they discover, at a later date, that the costs at will be too high for them.

They are, after all, supposed to be adults, not to mention being the intellectual elite of our society. Surely they can work such basic things out for themselves!

I'm out of here, I'm not into banging my head against a wall until it bleeds.

I think that too many of us have been humouring him for too long and forgetting that important maxim,

"Don't feed the troll"

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

I sometimes hate UK - you have a bunch of babyboomers who have no idea that they were handed life on a plate - they grabbed all the money they could squeeze out of it and now they don't want anyone else to have the same chance. Sickening.

You last two naysayers have added nothing useful to students understanding of the financial system they are burdened with. You refuse to engage in explaining exactly what liabilities it places upon students.

You prefer to condone naysaying about the price of books, and completely gloss over anything to do with the subject of this thread which is what is the most the poorest student pays in fees and the minimum grant plus bursary they should expect.

You clearly realise that my ideas of tax reform would tax the smugness off your faces. Meantime you seek to trash any chance that a student reading any of this might have of discovering whether his or her situation with fee waivers and grants and bursaries is fair or totally unfair compared to others.

Yours is the worst kind of politics - you think you know best for everyone else. You seem to think we need to keep the lid on this.

I have set out my ideas - you don't like that because you have nothing apparently to share. And because I make a response to the wet blankets slung carelessly over my arguments each time, you end up giving up. Yes I agree that students from rich families and from poor are equally deserving of the same support independent of their parents. There should be no means testing of university students. They should all receive the same free university education. It can be done by taxing the rich and in another thread I have shown exactly how it could be done immediately with the minimum of fuss.

Dunroamin poo-pooed that of course.

Dunroamin goes further now and resorts to large bold font and uses the word "Troll" like he is some kind of judge of the matter. More like the self-styled deputy marshall of a very poorly run little town I'd say - he/she doesn't say very much except "Troll" (i.e. just hang him boys and leave him to the birds).

I have revealed in this thread that the support system for the lowest income students is in total disarray. I have provided facts. There are maximum SFE grant students out there who receive only token extra support by way of fee waivers and bursaries and there are those receiving well into four figures each year, and yet more "lucky" (??) students out there receiving as much as £6,000. In between there are no doubt partially SFE grant supported students who seem at some universities to be entitled to expect NSP scholarship grants of 80% of the size of those received by maximum SFE grant low income students.

I say again to students who might be moving into their universities this week or next, pick up the phone or get round to your awards/bursarries/scholarships office and state your claim before the cupboard is empty i.e. that you want that same £6,000 extra help as I have seen as a minimum.

You are not undeserving of it. Students that receive it are no more deserving of it than you. You all deserve it and better.

NervousHomeowner

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

I say again to students who might be moving into their universities this week or next, pick up the phone or get round to your awards/bursarries/scholarships office and state your claim before the cupboard is empty i.e. that you want that same £6,000 extra help as I have seen as a minimum.

You are not undeserving of it. Students that receive it are no more deserving of it than you. You all deserve it and better.

Look, I can totally appreciate what you're saying but I think some of the stuff you're saying just totally misses the point.

Firstly, the above comments you make take into account nothing to do with the fact that different unis have different scholarships available so while some may be able to get up to an extra £6000 a year like you suggest, that doesn't mean that all unis offer such scholarships or that all students will be eligible for those scholarships. Therefore, simply 'urging' students to call up their unis and demand such amounts won't help them at all. In fact, lots of applications for scholarships close at the end of August so applying now won't help a lot of students. Furthermore, your comments about students 'deserving' scholarships/the full grant does nothing either, because it has nothing to do with 'deserving' anything and is purely about whether or not you meet the criteria set out for receiving said grants/loans/scholarships.

Also, your obsessive focus on the interest on student loans is a further misjudgement of what actually matters to low income students. Most students know that they won't actually pay off their loan, let alone the interest it accrues, and therefore it will be cancelled after 25 years. The interest on the loans has minimum impact to students applying for uni. A much bigger issue facing students is the very small grants/loans they receive and it would be more prudent, if you really do care about poor students, to campaign for say, larger maintenance grants, a more comprehensive loans system or more access to scholarships in order to help those students who's parents can't afford to/refuse to support them while they're at university.

Also, unrelated but I'd just like to boast that I've managed to secure a permanent job to help with expenses this year and I'm feeling rather pleased with myself

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

You are entitled to your view and entitled to feel proud of yourself for landing a part-time job.

I would say that most students are missing the point and mostly because they have been totally conditioned to miss it. Not your fault, but you surely realise that if you borrow large sums of money from anyone in this dodgy world economic client then you better be sure you know what you are really getting into and why you can justify it.

I know many people thesedays have a coping strategy that means they would prefer not to contemplate disaster risks and in fact will walk away from any discussion of it, but who knows if that is for the best ?

Remember the Day After Tomorrow when Sam tries to persuade those sheltering in the library not to go outside because it isn't safe because he knew someone who'd done his sums who was advising against it? A bit melodramatic of me to mention it perhaps, but you understand there is another angle to this loan scheme that few wish to discuss ...

PS I have no obsession with this. I have simply done the numbers and formed an opinion of some of the risks which I strongly believe young people should not encouraged to ignore. This exact time of year is when students are most likely to read my view and to compare my examples with their own. Yes each university is different in the level of support they give as cashback (that's all it is) but my point is that they should not be, especially when it results in apparently upside down prioritisation of needs between students who can buy cheaper accommodation versus those who have no choice but pay through the nose. Such discrepancies mean that the whole system is failing.

NervousHomeowner

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

You are entitled to your view and entitled to feel proud of yourself for landing a part-time job.

I would say that most students are missing the point and mostly because they have been totally conditioned to miss it. Not your fault, but you surely realise that if you borrow large sums of money from anyone in this dodgy world economic client then you better be sure you know what you are really getting into and why you can justify it.

I know many people thesedays have a coping strategy that means they would prefer not to contemplate disaster risks and in fact will walk away from any discussion of it, but who knows if that is for the best ?

Remember the Day After Tomorrow when Sam tries to persuade those sheltering in the library not to go outside because it isn't safe because he knew someone who'd done his sums who was advising against it? A bit melodramatic of me to mention it perhaps, but you understand there is another angle to this loan scheme that few wish to discuss ...

I haven't seen The Day After Tomorrow but I do feel you're hyping this up as if some catastrophic incident is going to happen to those currently receiving student loans because of the interest. However, for those of us already in receipt of loans, the worst case scenario is that we pay £X each month for the next 25 years as long as we're earning £21,000 or more. There's no catastrophic incident to come because we've already taken our loans, the terms have already been outlined, they can't be changed now.

I totally agree with you that university should be free or more heavily subsidised but currently, the loans repayment system is actually quite well set up to make sure that students won't be put in a situation where they're expected to pay back their loans with no regard for their ability to do so. Now if things change in the future and we adopt a system more like the American one, I'd be much more worried about interest and I believe it would have the potential catastrophic effects that you're talking about. But we don't have that (Yet..).

PS I have no obsession with this. I have simply done the numbers and formed an opinion of some of the risks which I strongly believe young people should not encouraged to ignore. This exact time of year is when students are most likely to read my view and to compare my examples with their own. Yes each university is different in the level of support they give as cashback (that's all it is) but my point is that they should not be, especially when it results in apparently upside down prioritisation of needs between students who can buy cheaper accommodation versus those who have no choice but pay through the nose. Such discrepancies mean that the whole system is failing.

And I totally agree with you! I think all universities should be required to provide a certain amount of financial help to their students but that isn't what you said in your posts - instead, you were advising students to call up their universities and demand X because a student at an entirely different institution has reportedly also received X. That doesn't help students at all, it simply gives them false information. Not to mention that any current students reading this will have already taken their loans and missed the deadlines for most scholarship applications, so you're not helping them anyway.

If, like you say, you want to help any students reading this, you'd have been much better off posting this back in October when students were applying for uni and again in July/Early August when students would be able to apply for scholarships.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

You are wrong NervousHomeOwner.

It is not true that any student has missed a deadline for scholarships and bursaries. It is best to have already applied of course, but you can continue applying throughout each year, or until the money dries up depending on what budget (NSP or otherwise) you may be hoping can fund you. If you have already signed up for loans then so long as you have not spent the money then perhaps someone could explain what is to stop you paying all or some of it back immediately if you have just been given some non-payable scholarship you were not expecting? Some might argue that you should borrow all that they will lend you and keep it for a rainy day. When I was a young person, I was told that about house mortgages - later on, outfits like Northern Rock were lending up to 120% (or even 125%?) of the value of a tangible asset (a house) but look where that got some people (and the lender) just a few years later ...

An educational qualification i.e. a degree is of course not a tangible asset. It cannot be sold on in order to immediately recoup most of the original cost, let alone for profit.


It is not true that I have given false information. The information I have given is based on real life examples. Had I known what I know now three months ago, yes I may have posted it then. I urge others to report what they have found recently.

It is fact that the system is right now, this week next week and in the coming weeks still open to applications and sending out scholarship/bursary offers which contain major anomalies in the amount compared to comparable courses at comparable universities in different locations. This often means that a London student for example finds scholarships/bursaries may be thin but is reminded/encouraged to consider that as a London student he or she can borrow far more at 6.3% than a student outside London. Yet we know not what rate that will be beyond 12 months time. Consequently students are offered perhaps only half the fee waiver/scholarship bursary offered to a student who has only half the accommodation cost and is studying at a campus in the sticks.

If you don't ask you might not get all you could get. As we have seen with the indecent haste with which so many have adopted £9,000 pa fees, universities are not watching your back. You need to watch your own front back and sides and adopt the MSE position! That is - ask questions and manoeuvre to the front of the queue to where the savings can be had. I detect that most students are not even aware that there are queues at university scholarship/bursary office desks right now (or that there certainly will be tomorrow!). I am concerned that most students and parents are just resigned to the position that last dropped through their postbox before they arrived at uni. My message is "Don't be resigned". Keep your eyes and ears open and phone or go ask - and don't take No for an answer until you've tried another angle or two.

Borrowing this kind of money at variable 6.3% plus is a fools errand. Far better to get it given to you than loaned to you at double the price that most people would say is sensible for a house mortgage right now. It is actually more than 4x what I pay on my mortgage, and 6x more than my brother pays on his. It is very expensive money that you students are borrowing, and chances are it will become more so now that the Bank of England has now set out its trigger point for when it will start to increase interest rates. When that happens, mortgages will inevitably rise and many homeowners will default on mortgages at a point where their loan interest rates may have doubled but still have not reached what students are paying this year.

This comparison I make with mortgages is worth exploring further for some luckier households. Much has been said about parents not taking on the debt themselves because their offspring may never have to pay it off. To me that is dangerous claptrap throing you off the scent if you as parents do believe your family is making an investment in any sense of the word in the young peoples' futures.

A parent reading this may have a mortgage because they invested in a roof or more than one roof over their children's heads. They found a way to afford it over maybe 25 or 30 years. Lately as many as 50% of UK mortgage holders may have been on Base rate Tracker mortgages which has been good, but maybe the goodtimes can't last on that. Another proportion may be on Offset mortgages which may mean some have plenty of headroom now in order to borrow back up to the original loan amount without asking. Others still may be able to remortgage right now and to release equity which they might give or lend to their their student offspring at a much better rate than the variable 6.3% - even a fixed rate possibly. The big problem with that for UK mortgages is that it is not easy to get a really long term fixed rate mortgage. The house I am sat in as I type this has a 30 year fixed rate mortgage in Euros at 3%. I hasten to add that it is not mine. I wish I had a mortgage like it - I might offer it to the young people I know to finance their tuition fees instead of SFE. You see, if I had such a mortgage, I could lend them right now all the money they needed for their entire uni course and they could budget easily to pay it off because a fixed 3% will never allow the loan balance to disappear out of sight and a university course even a long one actually costs far less than the average houseprice in the UK. That means it is not a debt that has to be put out of mind as we have been telling students. For a graduate, the payback actually would still be plannable and the whole uiversity package deal could be assessed properly in terms of whether it was real value for money. Real money i.e. not some "Never never" purchase. Why MSE ever agreed to teach young people that "never never" was something they should embrace, I shall never fathom.

Food for thought for some parents? I accept it is only an option for a minority, but if you have the ability to take a fixed rate mortgage at 3% for 25 or 30 years by virtue of it being secured on a house in Europe or something, then you will surely consider it.

Having said that, you would probably have first considered a free education in Europe to begin with ...



So for those stuck with SFE as the only option - what will RPI do we wonder? Students should wonder too. Sure you might say well a student will never default, and that may be true, but meantime the outstanding loan balance could get so far out of sight that you have no option but to throw yourself completely at the mercy of the government of the day and/or the private loan company who may by then own your debt. And the £21,000 threshold and the 9% and even the link with RPI as opposed to some less discredited index - how we wonder will they alter if the loans are privatised or even if they are not? So NervousHomeOwner, I know you don't want to be scared unnecessarily and I would not wish to be responsible for that, and I know that sometimes it is more comfortable to keep your head down and just move with the herd in the direction you are encouraged to go, but I encourage you to at least think about the underlying characteristics of the loan because the "No changes will be made" promise will last only as long as last week's or last year's newspapers if our country gets into serious financial difficulty because the world has tired of our continually hyped suggestion that the goody-goody world's financial centre UK has it all under control.

We hope so but we'll have to see ...

NervousHomeowner

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

You are wrong NervousHomeOwner.

It is not true that any student has missed a deadline for scholarships and bursaries. It is best to have already applied of course, but you can continue applying throughout each year, or until the money dries up depending on what budget (NSP or otherwise) you may be hoping can fund you. If you have already signed up for loans then so long as you have not spent the money then perhaps someone could explain what is to stop you paying all or some of it back immediately if you have just been given some non-payable scholarship you were not expecting? Some might argue that you should borrow all that they will lend you and keep it for a rainy day. When I was a young person, I was told that about house mortgages - later on, outfits like Northern Rock were lending up to 120% (or even 125%?) of the value of a tangible asset (a house) but look where that got some people (and the lender) just a few years later ...

I am not wrong. Plenty of universities put deadlines in place for their scholarship applications. I can tell you as such because I just applied for a bunch of them and the forms all stated that the deadline for applications was August 31st. Of course not all unis put those deadlines in place but many do. Students should still call up their university's funding office to see if this is the case for their uni.

You talk about students applying until the money 'dries up' - how much money do you think universities have available for scholarships? Depending on where you go, it probably isn't a lot. Chances are, it will have 'dried up', as you put it, by the time most students start back at uni, because it will have already been allocated to the thousands of students who already applied.

Some universities offer a hardship fund, which remains 'open' and can be applied for at any point within the year if students find themselves in financial hardship. However, this is different to a scholarship.

For the maintenance grants and loans from Student Finance, students can continue to apply for this up to 6 months after their year starts. Again, this is different to scholarships offered by universities.

It is not true that I have given false information. The information I have given is based on real life examples. Had I known what I know now three months ago, yes I may have posted it then. I urge others to report what they have found recently.

You did give false information. This is a direct quote from your post:

I say again to students who might be moving into their universities this week or next, pick up the phone or get round to your awards/bursarries/scholarships office and state your claim before the cupboard is empty i.e. that you want that same £6,000 extra help as I have seen as a minimum.

You state here that students should call up their universities and claim £6000 that you have seen as a minimum for additional funding. This is misinformation because very few universities offer £6000 scholarships at all, let alone as a minimum. Even at Russell Group Universities that offer very generous bursaries and scholarships to students from LIFs, a £600 a year scholarship would be highly unusual.

The suggestion that they should call their universities and see if they are eligible for any funding is a good suggestion, definitely. However, you are definitely misguided in the amounts that you suggest they will get. I'm not saying you're lying, just giving out information that is wrong and that it's unhelpful to do so.

So NervousHomeOwner, I know you don't want to be scared unnecessarily and I would not wish to be responsible for that, and I know that sometimes it is more comfortable to keep your head down and just move with the herd in the direction you are encouraged to go, but I encourage you to at least think about the underlying characteristics of the loan because the "No changes will be made" promise will last only as long as last week's or last year's newspapers if our country gets into serious financial difficulty because the world has tired of our continually hyped suggestion that the goody-goody world's financial centre UK has it all under control.

I promise, you're not scaring me unnecessarily. You seem to believe you're some beacon of truth lighting the way for all of us poor students with our 'heads down' who obviously don't see the truth like you do but I can assure you that I am not in any way, shape or form a student who does not understand her options. In fact, as one of the students you are trying to influence, I find your posts to be incredibly patronising.

The fact is, if students have signed their terms and conditions already and taken their loans already, changes cannot then be made at a later date by the government because the loan agreement is a contract, not a flimsy 'promise'. Please stop scare mongering.

Also, I came here to post this article because I thought you might find it interesting due to it's content on scholarships:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/09/hidden-costs-university

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Oh dear, NHO. You don't like to read the messages in my threads, do you? Sorry about that. I appreciate they are not everyone's cup of tea. They are designed to provoke a response (like anything worth writing if it is intended for someone else to read).

Where do I start?

I have not said £6,000 a year is the minimum grant including scholarship, but indeed I have suggested that if it (or more exactly £6,354) is good for one poor student it is good as a minimum for all and I make no apology for suggesting that students currently expecting to receive less than that make that very point to their own university, especially those expecting to receive just the basic maximum SFE grant of £3,354.

You clearly are one that believes that student deadlines are to be adhered to. Yes I can go with that, and good for you if you are talking about arriving on time at lectures and other appointments, and submitting course assignments! However, with regard to applications for scholarships and bursaries do please put your logical head on. Yes clearly it would be useful to apply early with all the right info. But just suppose the main breadwinner in a student household dies or just ups and leaves or simply just makes a mistake and doesn't provide their income data to SFE before the notional 31 August deadline you might be talking about. What happens when the data is submitted late as original data or as changed data? The worst that happens is that the grants and loan instalments may get paid late or you get told No as the first answer. Do you always accept No as the first answer, or maybe just sometimes? Yes it 'depends'. Everything depends on something. Sometimes your own resourcefulness or presentation of a case, perhaps?

But for the most deserving cases (or perhaps all cases at some universities) what happens to the communication of late application data by SFE to the university? It might be further delayed but when it arrives, it is not going to be ignored now is it, especially if it is a newly verified maximum SFE grant student? Of course not.

I haven't a clue how much money universities have for scholarships, but I KNOW how much they are now invoicing the majority (did I read 63% of all students?). That number is £9,000 a year. Seemingly universities got by on a lot less barely three years ago so I think that part of the system is in fact awash with cash, especially if they haven't significantly improved facilities/accommodation for undergraduates yet.

Bursaries/scholarships are cashback. Nothing more. A marketing gimmick. Nothing less. Sponsored by government. First year especially because of NSP.

The fact is, if students have signed their terms and conditions already and taken their loans already, changes cannot then be made at a later date by the government because the loan agreement is a contract, not a flimsy 'promise'. Please stop scare mongering.

Can you tell us what is promised about

• RPI + 3% (that's at least two potential variables by the way not one), and about
• the 9% and about
• the £21,000, and about
• what happens if you drop out, and about
• at what stage the loans might be securitized and sold to privateers

just to name a few flimsy aspects of the so called contracts? All it takes is a current or future government to have their hand forced. Unheard of? Er ... sorry ... a quick scan of the recent world economic situation might suggest for the UK it is eventually going to be more likely than not I would say. A question of degree of course ... I'd be interested in Stephanie Flanders take on UK student loans - anyone know if she has written about them anywhere?

Yes it is potentially scarey. I don't want to scare anyone unnecessarily, but I do believe that many should wake up. These loans are not cuddly toys but are dressed up to be as benign as cuddly toys. Build-a-Bear anyone? How do you know whats in those shiney bits and bobs they urge that you let them sew inside as standard? You better be sure you can trust the stuffing machine too. Else it might not be the bear ...

TerryMI5

Soleil_lune wrote: »

In response to the OP. £9,000 for the year's accommodation. I doubt that is correct! That's £225 a week (for the 40 weeks you mentioned.) And yes, £100 a week IS roughly what they live on. The accommodation and bills are included, and some unis give travel passes. So this £100 a week is for food/booze/clothing for one person. Plenty of students live on it, and manage OK

From what I know (except London) most accommodation is roughly around the £100 mark with the prices going up more due to personal preference (e.g on suite etc)
But what I don't get is how students can live on £100 with going out drinking every single night!