Student Hardship 2022 - How Was It For You?

[wafter]

I got hit by round one of the grinning narcissist's "worthless degrees for all" reforms, so £1k/yr tuition fees for a crap educational experience from a uni that was desperate to embrace the business model and rinse its students by cutting back contact time and generally milking us for all they could.

I mostly shared an HMO with three or four others; IIRC the rent for the whole place was around £850pcm. Had a student loan of £3-4k/yr which would just about have covered accommodation and fees - can't remember how I funded the rest tbh. I still have all that plus decades worth of compound interest around my neck (which will never get paid off as I'll never earn enough - unless they start moving the goal posts).

Tame stuff compared to what the current crop have to endure though - IIRC £9k/yr max fees, £50k+ debt at the end of the course with horrendous interest applied / loan terms. I believe the government have sold a lot of this student debt to private investment scumbags who are hardly going to be sympathetic as time rolls on and they demand ROI.. and that's before you factor in all the stuff that's been going on in the wider world over the past year.

I certainly couldn't justify uni were I in the bleak position of today's yoof - IMO it's an utterly shameful indictment of the sorry state our society has reached

 

[Spiderweb]

I thought students got loans now which cover Both tuition and living costs? Are you paying all that so she doesnt have to take out much of a loan? Loads of parents wont be able to pay anything like this.

Ah, I’ve since spoken to my wife, I pay approximately £1000/month as above but a grant of just over £4000/PA (around £1300/term) gets paid into my account, so she costs much less than £1000/month (phew!) I’ll edit my original post.

 

[Grant Fondo]

Going back to why higher education is now no longer free, the numbers are staggering ..... kids getting a first degree in 1990 - 77,000, by 2020 this figure is just shy of 450,000.
I would now like to extrapolate these figures using the student's favourite data set: Beer.
If every undergraduate in 1990 had ten, er, force of habit, five frothing pints on a single friday night - £481,000 (1990 prices).
Todays students (if they had the cash) would spend - £9million.
I would go on to calculate donner kebab spend, but my head hurts.

 

[Reynard]

For most of my undergrad at Brunel (Foundation year and a 3 year full-time BEng) I had tuition fees paid and a full grant. The year I finished my BEng (1997) was the last year my local authority paid grants and tuition fees. I actually saved most of my grants for those four years by living at what was then Casa Reynard and commuting rather than living in digs. So it was only travel and spending money.

For my MEng, I had to pay tuition fees (I think it was about £1200) and had no grant, but having saved up and got some funding from the parentals, again, running costs were very low.

Spent half a year in industry, decided I didn't enjoy what I was doing, and went back to uni for a PhD. Again, self-funded (fees around £1200 a year again) and living at home, but as parentals were retired, I qualified for hardship payments from the University of London.

I don't have kids, but if I did, right now, I wouldn't be advising them to go to uni unless it was for something like medicine, law or a career that MUST have that kind of tuition. If they wanted to do engineering, an apprenticeship would be a far better route in these days IMHO.

 

[cyberknight]

I was told to get a job straight out of school so no further education as father had just took early retirement ,oddly he took a part time job to send my younger brother and fund his phd

 

[fossyant]

I didn't go to Uni, but work at one ! Part time study whilst working got me my professional qualifications.

Daughter going to Uni locally - she get's the minimum grant which will cover her travel costs into Manchester everyday - and no, she refused my offer of a 'backie' on my bike.

That £1k a month is on top of fees, so you are looking at £60k by the end of 3 years. Living at home reduces the debt significantly. Surprisingly, even given the cost of staying in a Uni City, we can't find places for students in Manchester - all 3 Universities heavily over subscribed. It's the place to be.

I bought a 'schooner' of Ale from the local student place last week - it's no longer £1 a pint - £5.50 for a 2/3rd pint. There are some cheap bars but you are looking at £3-£4 a pint. It's only 'cheap' this week/nest for freshers - £1 a pint in some of the clubs round here.

 

[oldwheels]

I was at University of Glasgow in the late 1950’s and all tuition fees were paid and I got a full grant. First year of the 4 was doing farm work so got paid 15shillings per week and rather enjoyed it. First year at academia I did not enjoy and lived at home 20 miles away. Last couple of years were better as I was in shared digs but money was still tight.
All holidays I worked. I would have done an honours course but larked about too much so did not get high enough grades. The degree I have gave a good grounding in a great variety of subjects which stood me in good stead later.
Cannot remember the figures now but the full grant was less than £300 which with earnings meant pretty frugal living but I managed and graduated debt free.
As Raynard suggests an apprenticeship is a better idea nowadays but not available in Agriculture which was my speciality.

 

[wafter]

Foundation year and a 3 year full-time BEng

A fellow foundation & BEng buddy!

I'd had enough by the end of all that however so never got as far as the masters..

 

[Reynard]

A fellow foundation & BEng buddy!

I'd had enough by the end of all that however so never got as far as the masters..

Where did you do yours? I'm a Brunel alumna. I did a foundation year because I flubbed my A-levels, but in retrospect, if I'd had the right advice at school, I'd have done different A-levels and then done the foundation year. It covered the same stuff as A-levels, but in a much more practical way, which I really loved.

I did the Masters because there was stuff I wanted to do that I didn't have enough elective slots for in my final year of BEng. Namely composites, robotics, integrated manufacture and some other materials technology / stress analysis stuff.

Oops, and I forgot to mention that I was sponsored for my Masters by Reynard Cars - very little in the way of money, but technical support for my major project and parts for destructive testing. It was the same for my PhD, but then, I was sponsored by Mclaren.

 

[DCLane]

@wafter - that's what son no. 1 did, then decided part-way through to transfer to the 4-year integrated master's in Mechanical Engineering he's just finished.

@Grant Fondo - Going to university is seen as a rite of passage by many schools, helping push numbers up. One of the things I always ask my first year students is "why did you choose this subject / university?" A small, but significant, number simply don't know what they want to do. They inevitably disengage early, fail and it becomes an expensive gap year.

For some it would be better to go into industry through an apprenticeship rather than a degree: it'd suit them and be more appropriate for their learning. Or get a job and study a professional course part-time. And yes, I do teach on degree apprenticeship and professional programmes in addition to full-time undergraduate/postgraduate.

My area of teaching's a vocational-oriented subject area, being marketing, so we have a mixture of marketing/non-marketing students but with most of the graduates ending up in a professional career.

 

[Grant Fondo]

I bought a 'schooner' of Ale from the local student place last week - it's no longer £1 a pint - £5.50 for a 2/3rd pint

Aye, £6 a pint in Alberts Schloss these days, thats 3 x 1/3 pints .... oh, and £6.50 for a pint of Guiness at the Midland, bargain!

 

[Arrowfoot]

I am not an engineer but I found those with engineering degrees applied themselves better across many sectors outside of engineering. I suspect the discipline moulds the mental mind to be agile and nimble and ready for solutioning. You can see their approach to problems is well organised. I know that the financial sector began recruiting engineers in the mid 1980s. In the 2000s many moved into software development, analytics and decision science even if the degree were in civil, mechanical and electrical.

With all things remaining equal, I would recruit someone with an engineering degree over others at the drop of a hat.

 

[Grant Fondo]

I am feeling slightly guilty now that I only went to a handful of 9am Building Services lectures over the three years. Maybe paying an arm and a leg for tuition focuses the mind a bit better?

 

[Beebo]

Graduated in mid - late 90s.
Didn’t get a grant but also didn’t have to pay tuition fees.
The bank of mum and dad paid my accommodation and a bit of pocket money.
I worked in the uni bar and did holiday jobs. Plus a modest student loan of around £5k which I paid off in about 18 months once I got a job because I moved back home for a bit so could easily save.
Nowadays the £9k per annum fees do seem very off putting.

 

[midlife]

I thought students got loans now which cover Both tuition and living costs? Are you paying all that so she doesnt have to take out much of a loan? Loads of parents wont be able to pay anything like this.

The tuition fees are loaned whatever but living cost / maintenance grants are means tested. As I have a good wage I think my kids got about £3k. The rest I paid. Two kids so six years total at about £1k a month......