The con of the Student Loan

Lokolo

Your student loan rate is 4.8%.

Your loan and mortgage is likely to be a lot higher than this. So yes, concentrate on these first.

The higher the %, the higher the priority.

Oldernotwiser

Plus you won't have to pay your student loan if you lose your job/become ill/go part time, all of which things will still leave you paying everything else!

OohSoHolly

Had a scan/breif read of the other posts. So apologies if i missed this.

But.. Can you not pay off more than the amount they take each month? By
this i mean if they were planning on taking £78 or w.e, could you not pay back £200 if you had the money too?

I mean if you can, then surely in your first couple of years of work after Graduating (if you get a job more or less straight after graduating) you wont have that many outgoings so you could maybe afford to pay back a bit more?? Or not. Maybe i being naive :P

Sigur_2

You can pay off if you so desire.

Lokolo

OohSoHolly wrote: »

Had a scan/breif read of the other posts. So apologies if i missed this.

But.. Can you not pay off more than the amount they take each month? By
this i mean if they were planning on taking £78 or w.e, could you not pay back £200 if you had the money too?

I mean if you can, then surely in your first couple of years of work after Graduating (if you get a job more or less straight after graduating) you wont have that many outgoings so you could maybe afford to pay back a bit more?? Or not. Maybe i being naive :P

Yes but its not worth it!

You are better paying off higher debts or save the money!!!

You pay 4.8%. You can get interest rates 2/3% higher than this. Why take £100 off a debt which is costing you 4.8% when you can get 7% for the £100?

NineThreeNine

melancholly wrote: »

or don't realise that their fees go towards the library, sports, accommodation and food facilities that are subsidised. or to the careers service, university security, disability support, student union, counselling service or support staff who do all their admin. very very little of the fees actually pays for the time spent with the lecturers. fees are rubbish - but even at three grand it is still a massive discount on the real market value (just ask any non-EU student!). universities provide much more than a few lectures a week - at least to those students who actively use the huge range of services they offer!

FYI, all of the below is from my experiences at 2 Universities.

Sports - A good portion of this is paid for in 'Society fees', ranging between £4-15

Accommodation - Not subsidised in any way. It is cheaper to rent privately at a number of Universities. Universities are building 'premium' accommodation with en suites, etc. For example, at the University of Birmingham the new accommodation will cost ~£6000 p/a, whilst you can rent for £250 p/m. Saving thousands after bills... heck it's cheaper to live in a B&B.

Food - If this is subsidised, then it barely is. At Birmingham it is cheaper (usually by ~£1/2 a meal) to buy stuff to eat outside of the University. The campus stores are more expensive than the Tesco Express (technically a petrol station) just round the corner.


Despite this, undergraduates get it good. When complaining about their 'debt' situation they should look at the problems postgraduate students will have. Postgraduates get NO STUDENT LOAN; thus have to rely on other loan schemes which are basically bank loans with high rates of interest. For example, my CDL is interest free for 12 months, but after that rockets to ~13%! Yes, I will be moving it elsewhere!

aqueoushumour01

bestpud wrote: »

I don't know if I'm being thick, but I don't understand at all.

Of course there is interest but in real terms, the outstanding balance remains the same, so long as the interest is in line with inflation.

I think the benefit of student loans is exaggerated sometimes though. While it is relatively good, it is still a debt and the way it is sold makes it seem anything but that really. However, it is a fact of HE now so we have little choice but to accept it.

I'm not sure it is helpful to scare people though! It isn't ideal but, without it, most could not go to uni.

You're right in that if the interest rate = RPI then the real value stays the same. What I was saying is that by paying the £78 each month, that's the amount required to pay off the accumulated interest. If you're only paying off the interest each year, the amount in £ will remain the same and therefore the real value of this falls over time. I was just pointing out the fact that it could become quite depressing looking at your statement each year and seeing the same amount of debt - it'll seem like you're not even paying the debt off (even though in real terms you are)!

vicky_kidder

pavlovs_dog wrote: »

of course, students would get better value for money if they bother to turn up to lectures, prepare for seminars so that they can benefit from discussion etc. sadly in my experience an ever increasing number are there for the social life and see lectures as a chore :rolleyes:

I think this is quite an unfair post. I'm currently at university and all my friends and I go to nearly every lecture, every seminar, every tutorial and when going into the library to work I will always see at least one of them.

It's a common misconception (largely down to media, and partly down to only taking notice of the loud drunken students instead of the quieter studious ones) that all students are lazy and spend most their days watching tv and doing hardly any work.

Degrees take a h3ll of a lot of work, especially Bscs (which I'm doing) and no-one could get a good grade by doing hardly any work. I got myself up at 7-8am most mornings to work at least 8 hours a day most days throughout my time at uni and feel annoyed when people talk about students the way they do.

Sorry Pavlov's Dog, this isn't all aimed at you, I just get sick of the way people seem to thin about students and responses such as 'tax dodger' when I say I am one!

andyrules

laurenzo99 wrote: »

the way i see it is that you know what you are getting into when you take out a student loan. We are a lot better off with student loan than high street loans, credit cards and overdrafts

And the alternative is? Oh yes, not go into HE. :rolleyes:

Sigur_2

I pretty much have done jack all at university.