How are students supposed to afford University if they go on to do a Masters?

happyhero

I hope somebody can guide me on this.

My daughter left school did 2 years in Fashion and Textiles Print in UCA in Epsom. I think it was a Foundation course. Next living away from home she did 3 years in Rochester doing a degree and received a loan with very rough figures of £9k/y for the University fees and £9k/y for maintenance to live on, each of the 3 years.

Now she is going on to do a full time Masters course for 1 year after which she will start work, but after learning to budget over those 3 years with rent etc she now finds that they are only letting her have a loan for everything of about £11700 and the course costs about £10k or just over so if this is how it is what is the most common way that people can afford to move forward?

Her rent is £500/month and we are not in a great position moneywise to help. Our situation is complicated so I would rather not go into our side for now and concentrate on how my daughter would move forward similar to how she did in the last 3 years. Why don't they simply offer the same deal as before with student loans when doing a Masters?

We are looking at ways for her to borrow enough to pay her rent and maintenance/food bill for the year but with these ways she would have to also find money spare to pay back the loan from the beginning.

Plus as her studying has moved on its not as if she has more free time, in fact it has occupied virtually all of her free time as well, so we expect with a full time Masters she will be even busier which then makes it virtually impossible to do any part time job and even if she managed it, it would be unlikely to generate enough to pay back the loan. It all seems like too much pressure for her studying so hard with virtually no free time and now being restricted with the loan and being expected to work to pay it.

Am I missing something do I have it mixed up and what is her best way forward with affording this coming year?

Are there any student type loans like before that don't need paying straight away and are cheap?

matelodave

I've often wondered how "professional" students seem to be able to afford long term studying, whether they have to try and juggle work with study or get a grant or busary to continure after 3 years years. How do Phd's get funded?

My Grandson will have this quandry in a year's time when his masters year kicks in. Although, as he signed up for an MSc as a continuous course rather than an add-on, the loan situation may be different.

I shall watch this thread with interest to see how others have coped.

Spendless

My understanding is you can only borrow a max of £11k-ish for a masters from student loans and that's for everything including tuition fees. Is she studying at the same place she did her 3 year degree?  I've heard of places offering cheaper masters to students who've done their degree with them. Other places might offer cheaper tuition fees. Where my son studies (ex poly) I've just looked up a relevant masters for his course and the tuition is £6, 695 which presumably would give him the balance to live on.

In your case it seems that the issue is the high cost of the tuition compared to how much she is allowed to borrow. If other options aren't available, such as studying somewhere with cheaper fees, living at home and commuting in or working alongside, then maybe she will need to take a year out, work and save first. Unless there's something I'm not aware of then hopefully someone with more knowledge will post a suggestion. 

lr1277

About 25 years ago I got a post grad bank loan for an IT conversion course. No repayments were made during the course period, but the interest was rolled up.
A quick google suggests postgraduate bank loans are available, where you can borrow up to £100k, depending on the course being taken and I imagine your earning potential. I didn’t look much further so don’t know if the bank will let you have this loan alongside a loan from the SLC. Probably worth investigating.
HTH

justwhat

Many students get a part time job. I really don't understand how realistically a Student can say they have "no" free time.  You also get university holidays/breaks. 

Has she ever had a part-time job while at uni?

2childmum2

matelodave said:

I've often wondered how "professional" students seem to be able to afford long term studying, whether they have to try and juggle work with study or get a grant or busary to continure after 3 years years. How do Phd's get funded?

My Grandson will have this quandry in a year's time when his masters year kicks in. Although, as he signed up for an MSc as a continuous course rather than an add-on, the loan situation may be different.

I shall watch this thread with interest to see how others have coped.

If you do an integrated masters degree (i.e. the masters year is part of the initial degree) and you applied for it and were accepted at the beginning of the course then the 4th year forms part of the initial degree and you just get a 4th year of loan the same as you did for the first 3 years.  If you graduate with a degree and then go on to do a masters afterwards as a separate degree you have to have a separate loan - and pay them both back simultaneously.  

Science PhDs often come with funding - from the university, or from somewhere like the Research council.  Sometimes this is attached to a particular project and the student doesn't have to apply for it - sometimes they need to find a funding body themselves.  This will usually cover the fees and a bursary to live on. I'm not sure what happens with arts/humanities.

To the op - it might be worth looking for grants etc - a quick google revealed this -https://www.postgrad.com/fees_and_funding/postgrad_solutions_study_bursaries/information/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwub-HBhCyARIsAPctr7wcHUCClNOs-wgoQQoObSDa32iJlULFWNihUHRRl0fen8ZNGHeaHRgaAgg_EALw_wcB

and there are a lot of other websites giving different options for funding a masters

2childmum2

justwhat said:

Many students get a part time job. I really don't understand how realistically a Student can say they have "no" free time.  You also get university holidays/breaks. 

Has she ever had a part-time job while at uni?

Practical courses such as this one are very hands on and do take up a lot of time, so a part time job can be difficult. Postgraduate degrees often don't stick to term times either, so there is a lot less time available to work in the holidays.

happyhero

2childmum2 said:

justwhat said:

Many students get a part time job. I really don't understand how realistically a Student can say they have "no" free time.  You also get university holidays/breaks. 

Has she ever had a part-time job while at uni?

Practical courses such as this one are very hands on and do take up a lot of time, so a part time job can be difficult. Postgraduate degrees often don't stick to term times either, so there is a lot less time available to work in the holidays.

Exactly, her course runs differently to her previous years, its September to September oddly (well seems odd to me anyway).

Loanranger21

September to September is the norm for Masters degrees but staff and students still get all the university holidays that undergrads get. Unless she is doing something scientific which is based in a laboratory then she will have plenty of opportunity to work. Zero hours contracts were introduced some years ago to accommodate students.
 Her best bet is to live at home and ask you to subsidise her living expenses and to get at least one part time job while studying. Otherwise get a proper graduate type job, perhaps based on her degree subject and live at home paying her way and saving hard and postpone the masters until she has the money she needs.

 Why did she only discover this recently? It has always been this way.


I worked in universities for twenty years so speak from knowledge base. 

happyhero

Loanranger21 said:

September to September is the norm for Masters degrees but staff and students still get all the university holidays that undergrads get. Unless she is doing something scientific which is based in a laboratory then she will have plenty of opportunity to work. Zero hours contracts were introduced some years ago to accommodate students.
 Her best bet is to live at home and ask you to subsidise her living expenses and to get at least one part time job while studying. Otherwise get a proper graduate type job, perhaps based on her degree subject and live at home paying her way and saving hard and postpone the masters until she has the money she needs.

 Why did she only discover this recently? It has always been this way.


I worked in universities for twenty years so speak from knowledge base. 

Thank you for the advice, you only discover the finance side when it is relevant, up to now she has worked with others who are all getting happily financed. Now going to do the Masters, and actually the only one from her group who is doing this, she decided to sort out her finance just like she has done several times before only to discover BANG! No things don't carry on as they did before, she has a finance problem.

You probably are fully aware of this sort of stuff as you've worked there for 20 years, to us it is a shock. And our first reaction is WHY? I mean why not continue as before to help these people who are willing to better themselves and work hard.

It seems despite the intensity of a degree, as if that was not hard enough, they are going to make things more difficult by giving you less money and asking you to work as well. She is not at all lazy and will work if she can but I know with the last 3 years she had to put a lot of time in on the course outside the university, she has always worked hard like that even at school doing her homework etc. Credit to her because I know more people who are not like that at all.

We will manage, but I'm just a bit surprised how it works. I was thinking this thread would reveal it was a common problem and there was going to be a very typical method that all Masters students used, i.e. other funding that performed like the government funding where you pay nothing until you start work.

Loanranger21

All degrees at undergrad level are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, that is why overseas students are charged more than UK students. There is not a bottomless pit of money to subsidise postgraduate courses to the same extent.

Universities are not profit making enterprises but must get funding from the taxpayer and of course the students themselves. So masters degrees are expensive and the loans situation is complex. Many loans are never repaid as many graduates never reach the threshold to repay which I understand is about the average UK salary. So again the taxpayer has to step in to underwrite these debts to the universities. I am less up to date on student loans but I believe that is the general picture.

You need to encourage your daughter to find work to help herself along the way. She is an adult and this is one of the things to do. Otherwise, save up for what she wants to do.  I hope she has thoroughly explored the student outcomes for the masters degree and checked to find out if it is likely that work experience is expected prior to getting a graduate job in her field. This is essential research because she is taking on huge debt on top of the previous debt.

By the way, employers love students who have also worked while studying as it teaches so many skills, time management, people skills if in hospitality etc work disciplines and many more. All of these skills look good on her CV and gives her something else to talk about in an interview beside the obvious technical skills that she has learnt from the degrees.

What was she doing for of the course away from the university? Do you mean assignments? Work experience?

I am posing hard questions because she needs to go into this with her eyes wide open and that is why I am surprised that she is only now researching the fee situation.

You haven't mentioned what her degree subject is nor her masters subject.