| Product: |
Higher Education - Free for all or Fee for all? |
| Date: |
13/10/01 (37 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Necessary Evil
Disadvantages: Costs must outweigh Benefit, Creating a generation of debt
I have finally received a completed financial assessment for my child's university fees and student loan. What a farce. I am sure the cost incurred by the councils and the Student Loan Company must far outweigh just paying every student's fees and giving him or her the full loan.
Having completed my own calculations of what assistance I was entitled, my local council got it right on the third attempt. If your joint family taxable income exceeds £20,000 then you will have to pay some of the £1,075 student fee plus be assessed for entitlement to £955 of the student loan.
The first essential is to work out what you think you are entitled and the basic calculations are very simple. It does probably get more complicated if the student has their own income, lives independently, is on benefits, is a mature student, is unmarried with child, living as man and wife with a partner, has educational or living special needs etc etc to cover every possible politically correct sensitivity. Taking all this into account you may be entitled to a few more pounds.
The basic calculation is easily done. Take the total of you and your spouse's P60 gross earnings plus gross unearned income, eg savings income plus dividends etc. Take away any tax deductible personal pension, ie that not already reflected in your P60 gross earnings. This gives you your gross taxable earnings. Take away £20,000 to give you the income on which you are assessed. Divide this by £9.20 to give you the first assessment of what you will have to pay. To this add £45, which everyone has to pay, and take away £79 for every other dependent child living at home. This gives you your assessed contribution.
The maximum fees are £1,075. If your assessed contribution exceeds £1,075 then the balance is knocked off entitlement to the financially assessed part of the student loan. Maximum assessed part of the student loan is £955.
The assessment form isn't too diffi
cult to complete but the local council will want to see originals of every supporting document, P60 etc from your employers, statements of interest received from savings account, dividend slips, birth certificates of student and siblings.
I wouldn't mind if the assessment had been made correctly but only by querying the calculations did we get what we were entitled.
The moral is to make application as soon as you can; ours took three months to be processed. The fun part is that you have to go through the same exercise, from scratch, every year.
Vote for abolishing fees and bringing back the grant and keep the next generation out of debt
Summary:
|
|
