help my child with student fees vs putting the money aside for their first deposit

anonmoose

Not student loan I got the wording wrong but the maintenance loan is income assessed as Albermarle says above.

If the parents earn higher than a certain amount then the student is offered a smaller maintenance loan on a sliding scale. Everyone can get something but not everyone can get the full amount. 

Albermarle

anonmoose said:

Not student loan I got the wording wrong but the maintenance loan is income assessed as Albermarle says above.

If the parents earn higher than a certain amount then the student is offered a smaller maintenance loan on a sliding scale. Everyone can get something but not everyone can get the full amount. 

You are right that the loan for tuition fees is not assessed, but the maintenance loan is assessed.
However they are both student loans and in fact the student just ends up with one combined  loan to pay back ( or not ) 

Voyager2002

If you use your savings to pay part of the tuition fees then the money is gone. The only benefit is that much later on, once your son is earning a reasonable salary, the amount deducted from this to repay student loans is reduced. And of course money might be needed to get from being a fresh graduate to someone with a decent salary, which is probably the optimum way to use your savings.

Some examples from my son: he graduated (in law) and was offered a job with a charity that provided fantastic experience, but was paid at Minimum Wage. Since my son was young he did not even qualify for Working Tax Credit which would have been available for someone older with the same income and hours. The obvious response was to calculate the benefits (mainly WTC) that would have been payable and give him an equivalent amount of money, making it possible for him to stay in that job for long enough to benefit from the experience.

And for many careers post-graduate education is essential. When my son eventually decided he wanted to become a solicitor, he needed to take a vocational Masters course: tuition fee of more than £15,000, and since it was an intense full-time course money was needed for living expenses. The maximum student loan available for study at this level is £10K, so obviously money from the family was needed.

I suggest that in both of these cases spending the money in the way indicated was far more beneficial than simply reducing the amount of student loans outstanding.