In This Chapter
Introducing student finance
Learning some useful jargon
Finding sources of student finance
âStudent financeâ is a term which covers a wide variety of funding schemes across the UK. Student finance differs across the four nations of the UK, and describes a number of different models of funding, including grants, loans, bursaries and scholarships. In addition to the various items of funding available, âstudent financeâ also covers the notion of financial capability â or how you can look after your money so that it can work for you (and not against your studies). This includes making strategies for budgeting and looking after the money that you have, as well as being careful to make informed choices about credit.
In this chapter, I provide an introduction to the various forms student finance can take, along with suggestions for the next chapters to read depending on your personal interest in finance.
Paying for Your Education and Making It Pay
Your higher education study is likely to give you a truly transformational experience, opening your horizons to opportunities for life-enriching experiences in terms of your academic, social and personal development. Higher education can also be an opportunity to develop your financial capability, and for many higher education students, time spent studying a degree is also time spent learning to manage personal finances for the very first time.
The time you begin to consider higher education study is also the ideal time for you to begin considering the practicalities of the financial side of studying, and to begin making preparations for it if at all possible.
You may not have had any previous contact with the world of student finance, particularly if youâre the first in your family to enter higher education, so finding out how you can manage your money is really important. You also need to understand how you can afford to pay for the experience of taking your education to the next level.
The UK government introduced the concept of students paying towards the cost of their tuition fees in 1998. Since then, government-subsidised loan schemes have been available to meet the cost of tuition fees. The loan scheme allows students to
defer the cost of their education, not needing to repay until they have both finished their time in higher education and have entered into employment earning a sufficient level for the loan to be repaid.
These basic principles of the funding system remain in place today, and although some other aspects of the system have been âtweakedâ, you can still enter your studies safe in the knowledge that you havenât a thing to repay whilst youâre studying, and usually only need to make repayments once your personal taxable income has reached a required threshold.
Whilst tuition fee loans have been around since 2006 (prior to that tuition fee contribution grants had been in place since 1998), student loans for maintenance (living costs) were introduced back in 1990. Since then they have become an increasingly major part of the student finance package â and now you may even find a student loan is the sole source of student finance available to you (particularly if youâre ordinarily resident in England).
Being aware of the student finance available to you, understanding it and accessing it is only part of the story when it comes to making your finances work for you during your studies. You also need to develop your capability in terms of ensuring that you make the most of what money is available to you, avoiding unnecessary costs and realising as many economies as you can. Every little saving you can identify is the best means towards safeguarding your financial situation during your studies (read Chapters 15 and 16 for more tips on looking after your money once you have it). You should also seek to maximise the opportunities for securing funds to help make managing your situation far easier.