Means testing students (Means testing)

Member Name: Hasufel

Product:	Means testing
Date:	01/12/02 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: People from poorer backgrounds get financial aid, People who don't need it don't get it

Disadvantages: People who don't need it sometimes do get it, People who do need it sometimes don't get it, Assumes good relationship with parents

One of the most ludicrous parts of the whole means testing system has to be the way that students are assessed for their financial status. I'll take this in stages....

1. From the age of 18 it's a fact that the law no longer regards your parents to be responsible for you. They are under no obligation whatsoever to provide for you, and many students are unfortunate enough to have parents who stopped doing this even before their legal obligation ended. Yet parents' incomes are taken into account when it comes to grants and student loans and help with course fees, even though nothing can legally be done to force these parents to use this income on account of which your grants and loans are docked.

2. Unless you've been living independantly for a certain amount of years already, your parents' incomes will be used to dock your student income. This means that there are people who are living with partners in stable relationships, with children dependant on their wages, who have little to do with their parents and are perhaps on bad terms with them, who get told that they can't have a full loan because their parents earn too much money - as if this guy of 23 is going to go cap in hand begging his mum for money, and it goes without saying that she'll agree??

3. Why should the parents' incomes be taken into account when it's the STUDENT who will have to repay the loans!?

4. It's hypocritical and pathetic for the government to say in one breath that from the age of 18 you are completely independant of your parents (also absolving the parents from any duty to support or aid you), and in the next breath say that it goes without saying that they'll help you through college. This sucks.

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