On Thursday 04 July 2013 09:22 Bob Eager wrote in uk.d-i-y:
On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:27:30 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:
Perhaps you can help me here Bob (my dept has no undergrads so I don't
have any contact with this side of things)
1) Fees are paid by student loan with fairly easy repayment terms - I'm
pretty clear about this part;
2) How does cost of living/rent work? My limited understanding was that
was means tested with the possibility of the government paying some -
but for 2 working parents, it was likley the government contribution is
more or less zero?
There a maintenance loan of about £5000 if living away from home - it's
lumped in with the tuition loan. Rather less if living at home - about
£4000. A component of that is means tested and students with 'rich' (FSVO
rich) parents will lose about 35% of that.
Ah - Thank you. For the first time I think I understand.
For comparison, for interest, in 1986 at York:
Fees were 100% covered for me.
Grant was £2100/year.
Room in halls was £21/week (30 weeks/year)
Dining was typically £1 per proper meal in college. Self catering was
available and you could mix as you wished.
Guinness was about 80p/pint
So bringing that upto date using the BoE inflation calc:
1986 grant in 2012 terms = £5211
1986 room per week = £52
Dining / cooked meal = £2.50
Guinness = £2
So, back in the real world:
The grant/loan has matched inflation.
York Uni cheapest room is £90/week[1]
York Uni dining is £4.47 for breakfast plus dinner each day [2]
So it seems clear to me that whilst the grant was just about livable on in
1986 oop t'north, real world cost of living have doubled compared to
official inflation (lying toads) so modern students are unlikely to be able
to have a basic but confortable existance on the loan alone, even somewhere
cheap.
Granted - York was cheap in the 1980's and the whole economy up there has
taken a jump upwards in costs.
It's lumped in with the fees loan and there are no increased repayments.
3) If (2) is there a different type of student loan similar to (1) that
can be obtained?
It's a different loan but it's all lumped into one for repayment purposes.
2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub
jobs on to pay his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper
lines).
It's not enough, certainly if living away from home - but then the grant
never was either. Many students have part time jobs but that's to be
expected.
[1]
https://www.york.ac.uk/about/departments/support-and-
admin/accommodation/prices-payments/
[2]
http://www.york.ac.uk/commercialserv...mad/index.html
--
Tim Watts Personal Blog:
http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/
http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage
Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet