Student Loans

Dill

Spendless wrote: »

I was surprised at this attitude. I thought Uni would give him something to do instead of his current situation and even if it didn't directly lead to a job, it could give him a different area to live in, with possibly more opportunities. I saw in 3 years time for him if he didn't go, more of the same, claiming job seekers, minimum wage, zero hour contracts. At least going might change this, even if you can't guarantee it will.

Does he know what he wants to do? If his A level results aren't that great he may not be suited to an academic environment.

Spendless

Dill wrote: »

Does he know what he wants to do? If his A level results aren't that great he may not be suited to an academic environment.

No, that was the first thing his Mum said to me 'To do what?' I said 'whatever appeals' (obviously this would be grade permitting). It's not the child who was talking about it. I threw it in as a suggestion as an alternative to his current situation ie living in an area of high unemployment and only finding occasional temp min wage jobs via an agency.

Spendless

Lungboy wrote: »

If my daughter were about to apply for university, I'd be talking her in to studying in Germany. The courses are largely in English, a very high standard and rent + course fees are minimal.

What's the criteria? I know someone whose eldest has been accepted onto a course in The Netherlands but they have to work for x amount of weeks over a year. I am wondering for them if language will be an issue, only because I know someone who lives over there, she married a Dutch man and she struggled with work due to not knowing the language.

Arleen

Kmh120 wrote: »

Thank you both ( all!) so much. This is really interesting. I am very grateful for your input.

I'm talking to my daughter about it a lot and she is passionate about her subject and can't get where she wants to go without a degree + masters + (phD?) so its a given. She's going to Uni and i hope she has a damn good time and enjoys her life there. She tells me to stop fretting. But I feel the injustice for her and it makes me angry. Bl**dy Tories.

If we're going to stay IN Europe shouldnt we campaign for the same rights as other EU countries for our young people?

This actually may be a time for her to learn the difference between wanting something and getting it.

If you are looking at needing everything, including phD, to follow her "dream' then you are not looking at 50k of debt anymore, you are looking at a sum probably closer, if not over, 100k and earliest time when she will be able to start paying it back close to being 30.
Now if you have 100k laying around and can afford to pay for her dream of the passionate subject (which field is it anyway?) then by all means go for it. But since you are here I imagine that having to cough up 100k would be a substantial hurdle to you. And it won't be easier for new-phd-on-the-market daughter in the 5-10 years from now.

That is based on assumption that she will finish the course, and many people who dream of that long track just don't, winding up dropping out or going from one field to another. Even those who then get the degree, only relatively small part of them wind up working in the field they studied (!!!).
When they do that, the impending doom of growing interest just keeps growing and growing and growing. So I would say that unless the daughter can come up with a solid, realistic, financial plan of paying back the student loan, I would say her to seek a different future. Because it's easy to say now "don't fret mom", what is hard is paying back the large pile of money which will cut into her income for next 10-30 years after school. That is where regret will kick in, and why kids have parents - to protect them from problems that we've already been burnt with.

Alternative to what she wants now is to send her to work and save money, pick a trade or skill while doing so (and most of jobs don't require college degrees to get into them). In few years time, if she is as smart with money as you say, she can save very nice chunk of change which she can spend on paying for school. Even better she could then study part time while still working and paying for the studies with income rather than a loan. All good not living above your means and all that, and if that is her true passion (which having to spend years of savings of money she put sweat into will verify) then she will still get her degrees and become financially independent at the same time.

Dill

Arleen wrote: »

This actually may be a time for her to learn the difference between wanting something and getting it.

If you are looking at needing everything, including phD, to follow her "dream' then you are not looking at 50k of debt anymore, you are looking at a sum probably closer, if not over, 100k and earliest time when she will be able to start paying it back close to being 30.
Now if you have 100k laying around and can afford to pay for her dream of the passionate subject (which field is it anyway?) then by all means go for it. But since you are here I imagine that having to cough up 100k would be a substantial hurdle to you. And it won't be easier for new-phd-on-the-market daughter in the 5-10 years from now.

If you need a hundred grand to get a PhD how on earth do people do it? There can't be that many people around who have that kind of money.

I should add that I stopped at degree level (BA Hons) because I couldn't afford further study, but that was years ago.

Arleen

Dill wrote: »

If you need a hundred grand to get a PhD how on earth do people do it? There can't be that many people around who have that kind of money.

I should add that I stopped at degree level (BA Hons) because I couldn't afford further study, but that was years ago.

Depends how you go about the PhD loans needed vary greatly from 0 to very high sums. You can get various grants/sponsorships if you are exceptional in your field and/or work as doctoral candidate with the uni, trying to cut some employment out of grants in your field that will, hopefully, will be also related to your degree. Both approaches require a lot of out-of-studying work, between trying to pull grants for your school, trying to cut into the grant money with your research or just searching/applying for all types of scholarships/grants you can even remotely imagine applying for.
The work route slows down progress toward your PhD by a lot. But at the same time if you go the working-route you very soon learn that the PhD will shift from being "the goal" to more of a side-effect of your academic career.

It's also worth keeping in mind that very small percent of folk who go to higher education obtain the PhD, which well reflects how hard and expensive it is to earn. And even after that many of the new-phds wind up... leaving universities to work in different field because private sector pays handsomely for "data scientists" and people with good scientific rigour in general. Jobs for which you don't really need higher education altogether, but rather 6 to 18 months worth of courses.

missbiggles1

Spendless wrote: »

Reading this with interest. This weekend we visited some family friends with 2 children. Their eldest wasn't that academic, got some A levels though not great grades. Their youngest, who is just taking A levels, very clever, has had a scholarship to go to a private school for sixth form and offers from Unis, including an unconditional offer.

I asked after their eldest, who is almost 20 and has had a couple of apprenticeships finish after 3 months and now isn't working. Last job was via an agency warehouse work. Their Mum said there wasn't much work available. This is true. We live in an unemployment blackhole and I lost my job at the end of last year and haven't found anything else, so far, had a few interviews that have amounted to nothing. I asked Mum if eldest would consider going to Uni and she said No, because she didn't want him to wait 3/4 years to start working, coming out with loads of debt, possibly not working during Uni.

I was surprised at this attitude. I thought Uni would give him something to do instead of his current situation and even if it didn't directly lead to a job, it could give him a different area to live in, with possibly more opportunities. I saw in 3 years time for him if he didn't go, more of the same, claiming job seekers, minimum wage, zero hour contracts. At least going might change this, even if you can't guarantee it will.

For somebody who's neither motivated nor academic, he might well be in the same situation in 3 years' time but with many thousands of debt so I rather agree with his parents' attitude on this.

missbiggles1

Arleen wrote: »

This actually may be a time for her to learn the difference between wanting something and getting it.

If you are looking at needing everything, including phD, to follow her "dream' then you are not looking at 50k of debt anymore, you are looking at a sum probably closer, if not over, 100k and earliest time when she will be able to start paying it back close to being 30.
Now if you have 100k laying around and can afford to pay for her dream of the passionate subject (which field is it anyway?) then by all means go for it. But since you are here I imagine that having to cough up 100k would be a substantial hurdle to you. And it won't be easier for new-phd-on-the-market daughter in the 5-10 years from now.

That is based on assumption that she will finish the course, and many people who dream of that long track just don't, winding up dropping out or going from one field to another. Even those who then get the degree, only relatively small part of them wind up working in the field they studied (!!!).
When they do that, the impending doom of growing interest just keeps growing and growing and growing. So I would say that unless the daughter can come up with a solid, realistic, financial plan of paying back the student loan, I would say her to seek a different future. Because it's easy to say now "don't fret mom", what is hard is paying back the large pile of money which will cut into her income for next 10-30 years after school. That is where regret will kick in, and why kids have parents - to protect them from problems that we've already been burnt with.

Alternative to what she wants now is to send her to work and save money, pick a trade or skill while doing so (and most of jobs don't require college degrees to get into them). In few years time, if she is as smart with money as you say, she can save very nice chunk of change which she can spend on paying for school. Even better she could then study part time while still working and paying for the studies with income rather than a loan. All good not living above your means and all that, and if that is her true passion (which having to spend years of savings of money she put sweat into will verify) then she will still get her degrees and become financially independent at the same time.

I think that's scare mongering in the extreme and totally inaccurate to boot! To state that it would be the parent who has to pay for any of this is just totally wrong.

Arleen

missbiggles1 wrote: »

I think that's scare mongering in the extreme and totally inaccurate to boot! To state that it would be the parent who has to pay for any of this is just totally wrong.

You may actually want to read the entire post if that is your conclusion. Because if a parent, someone who has been in workforce for tens of years, has problem to come up with that amount of money, good luck to someone new to the job market to do that. And that is the point, because parent knows how hard it is to save up any substantial amount of money, while the kid, usually, doesn't. And yet the kids will go and spend money, which they don't have, on degrees that usually do not lead to the dream 60k+ jobs they were "promised" by universities.
Meanwhile the interest just keeps on rolling.

And if you think that this is "over the top", i recommend checking up some surveys about university graduates. Granted most of them are done in the US, but there are some done in the UK, for example: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/majority-of-uk-graduates-are-working-in-a-job-that-doesnt-require-a-university-degree-new-survey-10385832.html

It was a catchy slogan of the early to mid 20th century: "Go to the university, escape the life of poverty", but it sadly doesn't work that way. All it did was drive higher education prices through the roof while lowering youth employment rates.

zagfles

andyfromotley wrote: »

Finally you need to consider the 'graduate premium' that simply having a degree will cause you to get better jobs and earn more. This was always a significant factor when only 5% of people went to uni. With getting on for 50% of kids now going this is disappearing fast and will be gone fairly soon altogether imo.

Is it? Or is it getting worse?

I can see it getting worse because in the old days, for many "professional" jobs it wasn't essential to have a degree, there simply weren't enough graduates for companies to be able to demand degrees. They would be restricting themselves to 5% of the workforce. So many of them accepted starters without degrees, usually on a lower salary, but after a few years those without degrees could easily progress to the same level as those with.

But if 50% have degrees, then not having one could mean you're seen as the bottom 50% of the potential workforce, rather than the bottom 95%. So while having a degree these days is far less of a positive than it was, not having one is far more of a negative than it was.

I used to work with an Oxford graduate and an ex-appentice who both started at the same time in the early 80's, they ended up doing the same job and after about 10 years and they were on the same pay. I also know a recent graduate and apprentice who both started about 5 years ago, doing very similar jobs, and there's about a £10k difference in their pay still. But there's plenty of anecotes online and saying the opposite... This ONS report is quite interesting...

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_337841.pdf