So miss iainc is going to Uni later this yr, either Edinburgh or Aberdeen. Being Scottish she will get fees paid 😆 and will be seeking max student loan. SHe will be staying in Halls for 1st yr, then maybe a flat. Me and her Mum are starting to try and work out what we should be giving her, cash wise, on a monthly basis She has had part time work while at school for last few yrs (her own desire) and currently does some hotel waitressing a few shifts a week, so is planning do continue with bar/hotel work to fund her social life. So what is the going rate for ‘parental contribution’ ? We think her student loan will pay her accomodation in full with perhaps a wee bit left over.

We obviously want her to have as much as she can, within reason and without leaving us eating bread and water and her wee brothers missing out on stuff, but at the same time don’t want her ‘out of the norm’

experiences from parents and students welcome !

I paid for everything on my own (fees and all) when I went to uni in 2005 (I’m 30 now) and my wife and I have been thinking about this recently, having just had our first child born in November.

I think I’d want my kinds to have a decent work ethic like Kate and I did, so would offer to match what they earn. £ for £ while at uni.

M.

What about the experience of an academic?

Officially we’re supposed to suggest students don’t have a job for more than 15 hours a week, but many wouldn’t be able to live on less because parents can’t/won’t offer financial support. I’ve always believed that students who work are much more organised than those who live on handouts from their parents. It teaches them time management skills and the value of what they are earning. Based on that i’d suggest not giving your daughter too much, and telling her to keep a job.

Giving students too much money can also lead to resentment from her course mates, particularly if they appear to waste it.

thanks for responses so far. Capt Jon – I agree with what you are saying, and so does she – she has a good work ethic, and held down a sat job in a shoe shop from aged 15 till late last yr, when she decided to get some waitressing work, which would give her better experience for a job while at Uni.

When I was at Uni many many yrs ago I had a bar job for 3 yrs and got smallish monthly allowance from my folks.

Guess this depends pretty heavily on the nature of the course: if studying science or engineering I reckon working during term time is asking for trouble. 20 hours a week of contact and 15-20 hours of homework/ lab work leaves no time for a job.

IMO much better to concentrate on getting a decent degree and work during the summer.

she is planning to do Law. She is determined to have a part time job, which I think is fine as long as the balance is right – I have to trust her on this as she has worked part time through her school exam years and got good grades for unconditional Uni offers.

I didn’t work during term time at Uni. I was at Durham and terms are shorter than most so you get more lectures “crammed” into a shorter time period. I was doing a science degree though so I had 2 days of labs and then 3 days of virtually full lectures (although having been working for a number of years I long to have such a “crammed” timetable.) It may be easier if you are doing an arts degree with less contact hours.

I think I would have struggled to work in addition to what I was doing. If I did have a regular job it would have been at the detriment of any extra curricular activities. I had planty of friends who regularly had to miss out on trips and competitions because of work. Of course I was actually doing something. I was paddling (kayaking) a lot, I competed in polo, slalom and river race. In my final years I was acting as a river leader so coaching and looking after new paddlers, I was helping run the club etc. We ran Wednesday coaching, sunday night pool sessions, saturday river trips, tuesday night fitness, thursday night socials. I also had a sideline interest in mountain biking and ballroom dancing.

I did a masters degree and my 4th year was a bit more challenging. I spent a lot of time in the labs but also, because of the experiments I was running I would often have to be in relatively early and stay relatively late (with a 3 hour lunch spent riding in summer).

Work would have been valuable experience but I think I got other useful experiences and “life lessons” from extra curricular activities. Who knows when an ability to tango or quickstep could come in useful! You’ve got plenty of time to get used to a world of work, university can be fun and you can learn a lot while having fun. I’ve always had a reasonable work ethic, probably learnt more when I was a lot younger through my parents…

In terms of jobs it is most worthwhile looking for summer internships. This kind of relevant work experience is very highly valued by employers, probably more so than bar work.

Humanities degrees at a good Uni’ are no different – students will be studying a minimum of 30hrs a week. If a job is a nice distraction and pocket money – great, but I do not like to see students doing more than 15hrs a week if it can be helped.

If you are giving her money for her to pay for rent/bills/food etc., make sure you give it as money, so she can learn the value of it.

My cousins all get their rent and bills paid direct by my aunt&uncle, and they have no concept of money, they just fritter it away with no ideas about renting a cheaper place or turning lights/telly off when they’re out.

Dave

jonba – many thanks for that – gives it a different perspective. So how did you finance it if you don’t mind me asking ? I presume you were getting a reasonable contribution form you folks ?

I am trying to get a handle on what sort of monthly fig we should be stumping up.

(about to go offline to take boys to school then me to work…)

cheers

Do the maths – What do you reckon the course will cost in books/materials/computer etc; transport; food per week whilst at uni; a bit of a social life (£25pw?); plus ability to buy a few clothes, non essentials and presents for people every now and then & run a phone. Add it all up and then remove £3K (£7ph X 15hrs a week X 30wks of academic study) as her contribution.

She could either make her contribution in term time or in the holidays. Any summer holiday travel plans would come from her own labour on top of that. You might have to give her her cash in odd lumps dependent on her cashflow and when she is working.

My parents paid for accomodation (around £50 per week at the time) and I paid everything else. Generally I could afford all the necessities using my student loan (£3000 per year) and fun stuff was paid for by me working the summer holidays.

I spent one summer in a warehouse unloading lorries full of double mattresses and stacking them 8ft high and then another checkin GCSE exam scripts had been scored correctly. It was fun I can tell you. The thought of doing that for the rest of my life certainly motivated me to not waste my time at uni.

I got this wrong which might in part be down to the fact me and her mother split up when MissB was 6.

She had worked for a few years in chippy before going to Liverpool (from York) for uni. I paid her accommodation, fees, utilities, new laptop and sent her I think £140 per month on top first two years. She was telling me she could not afford to eat! (No idea what her mother contributed and she had loans). Didn’t like to ask what she did with it all!

Eventually I started getting Sainsbury’s to deliver her grub which she chose and I paid for and sent her a lot less money.

Difficult balance but I think you are thinking along the right lines.

Was at uni (manchester) between 2005 – 2008. My parents are both academics (at Durham) and have witnessed students being unable to cope through having to work. They didn’t want me to have a job and therefore paid my fees and an allowance of £500pcm – plus I had the loan.

I got all of this as money and had to budget as I saw fit. My (now) wife was also at manchester at the same time and her parents gave her almost nothing meaning she really struggled and I supported her as well (she was doing a dual language degree and had no time to do a job).

I spent 9am – 5pm in university, either at the library or in lectures and came out with a high 1st. In my spare time I got to ride my bike and spend time with friends. I’m very glad that I didn’t have to spend nights working in a bar!

Being academics they’d always assumed that I would go to uni and had been putting money aside since I was born.

thanks for all this info so far, really helpful. I’m currently reckoning on somewhere around £200 – £300 per month. Blackhound – similarities here in that her mum and I split 15 years ago and both have new lives and families, so whatever figure we come up with will be paid 50/50 between me and her mum. (thankfully we get on ok most of the time !)

As others have said, when I did my degree I’m grateful I didn’t need to work. I can compare directly to a housemate who did, and was on the same degree, and got the same grade (for similar amounts of uni work).

The difference between us was I spent wednesday afternoons at fencing matches, saturdays riding my bike, and a couple evenings a week training/pub with the clubs. He spent most of this time working.

I did do some summer work though, and I did have to take care how I spent my cash. Taking a year out to do a (paid) placement helped a lot too.

My experience…

I come from a large, not well-off family and with a small amount of application of the grey stuff I achieved a place at a posh uni. Not the same one as jonba but in a similar vein.

I did a science degree and it was explained that term-time employment was discouraged. There would not be time to fit in more than a few hours paid work without impact on your studies let alone extra-curricular activities!

Income:

For most of the degree I received the full means-tested loan (~£3400). My uni matched the means-tested part of it through a bursary (£~1000). I worked full-time in easter and summer vacations. (£4000-5000). No credit cards or loans.

Expenditure:

Out of this I paid my tuition fees (£1100) and rent (£90 p/w) and all living costs.

On this I managed pretty comfortably. 🙂

I wasn’t mtbing and didn’t have money to burn on skiing trips, foreign holidays or such nonsense. 🙁

Hard times:

In my 2nd year when my mum returned to work, I received minimum loan and therefore no bursary. I spoke to the ‘rents and got £500 to help me through. Mum was working but the family was no better off so this was hard to ask for. I also got about £500 in hardship grants during that year.

Hope this helps.

It seems that a lot of parents end up subsidising little Polly’s boozing lifestyle!

I had my fee’s paid for by the LEA/government in my first year and actuly qualified for a small grant on top of the student loan, by the end of the 4th year it had swung the other way as my parents income changed and they paid the fee’s.

The loan covered accomodation and food, socialising, textbooks etc. I had summer jobs paying reasnoble money (£7-£8/hour doing basicly a graduates job) which meant I came out of uni with a full ISA in my 4th year which paid for biking, toys, hollidays, computer etc.

Parents paid me ~£200 which was meant to cover travel, textbooks etc, but in reality just went in the general pot of money.

My brother went through under the newer system of upto ~£3k fees, my parents basicly topped up his money/fees/loan so he was in the same position as me. With the exception of his final year where he opted to take the fees on the loan and used the money to buy a car and insure it.

Working over summer, terms free is the best bet if you can afford it IMO / E. Everything depends on how she adjusts to the course though – anyone who’s been to university will know people who worked jobs throughout yet still left with a first – some people have that focus where they can massacre coursework and reading. Others just get overwhelmed with the material no matter how much time they have. There’s a lot of dry weight of material to learn in law I believe.

A key thing to realise is that anyone bright can keep their head above water on a course and get through it, so I see a lot of undergrads kidding themselves that they’re doing OK when really they’re under-performing. The degree classification scale is a bit logarithmic in that way – it takes far more effort to consistently produce work at a higher level. As a parent it’s hard to know how your kids are really doing at uni, and whether things like p/t jobs make a measurable difference to their performance.

I was in catered halls. My parents paid the accommodation/food costs and I covered everything else with student loans.

Back in the day, even though I got a grant and a healthy amount of money from my dad I still worked during term-time at University. I did about 16 hours a week (2 x4 hr + one 8hr shift) and this was fine with my economics degree.
It was in the local Burger King and it was bloody awful – they only gave me one uniform and I usually didn’t have time to wash it between one day and the next and when I came to put it on the next day you could smell and feel the burger grease on it. My shift boss was usually an 18 year old short fat ginger tw*t who thought he ruled the whole world. But then I had the last laugh going off to Malaysia and Indoesia back-packing with my girlfriend (now wife)for 6 weeks in the summer as my mates went back to jobs such as one at the Fruit’n’Fibre factory (putting the raisins in the box) for the whole of the summer.

I’m old enough to go back to the student grant days, so may not be so relevant. Assuming she wants to be a lawyer, what I would be thinking about is getting good contacts with firms as soon as possible, so maybe getting part time or holiday jobs there. Don’t know Scotland, but south of the border the big bottleneck to becoming a lawyer is the traineeship in the firm. There are many more folk coming out of the postgrad law colleges than there are traineeships, and the postgrad qual is time limited, so if not used within two years, lapses. Competition for the training place is where you get to be a lawyer, most can get the qualifications. Mrsmidlife is head of PI at a small/medium but influential firm and gets to turn down some fantastic graduates, such is the competition for their trainee places.

I studied law, I also paid for myself with no parental support. I ended up working almost full time by my third year to pay my way and couldn’t commit the time needed to complete the (ridiculous) reading lists. A contributory factor to my desmond…

With the debt I had I decided against a professional loan and didn’t continue with law – couldn’t face the cost of the LPC and the fact you were not guaranteed a contract at the end of it. I take it you are factoring in supporting her during this time too?

(now doing reasonably well for myself in IT so don’t regret not pursuing law further)

I didn’t work in term time (except for a bit of fixing PCs, etc as a sideline but that was more for pints than cash), but every holiday I’d be back at home either carrying on my previous evening/weekend job at Sainsburys or later temping, mostly at Royal Mail. Very course-dependent though, some are easier than others to fit in regular term-time work, some have long reading lists and coursework, etc to do in holidays.

Parents covered accommodation and basic food (ie. £20 or so a week, enough to go to the supermarket and cook yourself, not takeaways every night), my earnings in the holidays were for computers, books, bike bits, booze, etc.

I know I was lucky to be subsidised to that level and wouldn’t dream of going back to my parents and ask for more. My brother on the other hand was constantly running out of money and having to be topped up, and stopped bothering to work in the holidays too.

After paying rent and tution fees fees with a full student loan (London band) I had £25 a year left over, and just worked my arse off in additon to studying. No parental support.

I put myself through – worked my arse off though. When I wasn’t in lectures or studying I was at work normally till around midnight most days, then worked all weekends. I took a minimal student loan over the 3 years (£5k).

I’d advise her not to max out her student loan if possible – you just leave uni with thousands of debt before you even start working.

When our little ‘un is old enough for uni I’ll be encouraging her to study at a local uni/college so she doesn’t have to incur the rent/food/bills situation. Sure it’s probably taking away from the ‘experience’ a little, but saving loads in non-accrued debt.

If she’s smart enough to go to uni, and responsible enough to be trusted with your money is it not reasonable to ask her to work out her budget, and how much she thinks she can earn etc, then see if you are prepared to plug the gap.

I’d assume she will underestimate her costs on everything, but its a good starting point. If she contacts the Student Association at either Ed or Abdn they will be able to provide her with some ball park figures. I’d guess at both institutions parental support varies from zero to limitless! I may be wrongly stereotyping here, but I suspect the average law student gets more support than the average science student.

loads of great stuff in here for me (and miss iainc ‘cos she’ll be reading it too), much appreciated, ta

problem with the student load is it comes three times a year. means your bank account looks v plump at the beginning of term and very low by the end.

this can be more difficult to manage than a monthly income. also depends on the course – I imagine law has lots of expensive books. my course (product design) was low on course books but heavy on project materials – which is an end of term expenditure. this meant people on my course were often broke by the end of term – sometimes to the point of not eating properly.

I worked throughout uni – although not in term time the first year. I had an industrial placement – continued there part time through my final year and after graduation. this was hugely helpful in the job market – same might not be true of law.

you need to sit down and budget. how much of SL is left after accomodation. enough for food?

ime my load covered the acc. and no more. My parents paid the acc. i paid the fees, food & course stuff worked part time jobs to keep me having a good time. summer jobs meant i could go to a festival or new drive train for the bike. this might not be possible if vacation schemes are on the cards (they should be if she wants a job in law)

we have worked out that if she is in halls the loan will pay that and not a lot more. So roughly reckoning that if she is getting say £300 a month from parents and £200 a month from part time work during term time, then is £500 a fair amount for books, food, clothing, social life ? She wants to work Easter and Summer and will be aiming for law work at these times.

Halls are mostly catered at Edi no?

Sounds like quite a lot, tho I guess without her work it’s not much, so gives her incentive to work but she won’t exactly starve if she doesn’t.

You could base your support on these figures

IA – that’s point about catered, must check, ta

patentlywill – good link thanks. I just had a wee play with that, taking out the tuition fees which are paid by our jolly decent Scottish Government 🙂 – leaves it just above the £300 a month, so I am thinking of that as my guide figure, although need to check out IA’s point on halls

cheers

My 3 kids all went to Uni. We paid their fees and rent. They used loans and part time earnings for the rest.

They’re all working now and I think they feel it was a fair deal. They probably ended up in better accommodation than if they’d had to pay themselves, but that’s no bad thing. My daughter ended up as a flatmate of Orlando from the Maccabees so we get “on the guest list” from time to time.

How much do you get for a student loan these days? My final year was when they came in and it was something like £600 for the year? 😯

Student loan around £4k per annum, which will cover accomodation if in halls.

BigJohn – yeah, my thinking is simliar amount to rent (as fees paid)

cheers

Sounds like a lot. But maybe the cost of living has gone up a lot and I have rose tinted specs on…

My parents, funded me pretty much unquestioningly through uni 1995-1999. I was lucky. In the first year I think I got a bit of a grant from my LEA ( it was the era of the end of grants and the start of loans. Student fees were unknown though…)

My rent would be paid, and I had a further £400 (rising to £500 in my later years) per term (i.e late Sept to Christmas, Jan to Easter, Easter to June). This was to cover food, books, anything and everything really.
I didn’t feel or have the need to work, and managed to fund climbing trips and climbing gear from that. I ran a car, but apart from the initial purpose my Dad funded its running costs, and I guess I must have been given Petrol money to blackmail me to go home!

I got a loan in my last year to fund a 6 week climbing trip to an unclimbed area in Greenland…. Seemed a reasonable reason to wrack up some debt. But my Parents didn’t. That’s when I decided we were different and I decided it was time to really stand on my own feet and make decisions for me.

I would work for most, well ok at least 1/2 of the summers.

Hmmm £400 seemed like a lot at the time and I felt very lucky….but it doesn’tseem like a lot now…… gee I’m getting old!!!

Hmmm £400 seemed like a lot at the time and I felt very lucky….but it doesn’tseem like a lot now…… gee I’m getting old!!!

tell me about it – I graduated in 1987 !

I had a small grant, and a student loan. We had no tuition fees when I was at university.

The grant pretty much paid my rent for the year. This led to the student loan paying for everything else that was needed (clothes, books, stationary, bus fare). My parents would visit reasonably often (every 6 weeks) and would do a stack of food shopping for me when they did, I made this last as long as possible. My parents couldn’t afford to give me an awful lot more than this.

I managed ok in the first year like this without a job, but needed a job (working 20hrs per week) in the 2nd & 3rd years to have any kind of social life. The job actually helped studies really, I had to be at a newsagents at 6am 3 times a week, so I was having early nights and not going out so much. I’d have just been going out til late, and in bed in the morning otherwise, not studying or earning!