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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Cambridge And Oxford and a few other “elite” unis don’t allow students to work during the school year afaik, this alone filters many students but “ironically” not the poorest ones which may be eligible for a full tuition cover + stipend.

Low income families above the low income limit set by the government who cannot afford tuition + covering living expenses tend to be those who can’t really afford to attend those schools and this includes a lot of what would normally be considered middle class.

Yes you can take a loan but Cambridge and Oxford as notoriously expensive to live around, student accommodation aren’t cheap and the overall cost of living is quite high.

So you tend to skew towards either those who have money or families which planned for this from the get go, a few token poor people but quite a few of those that come from an “average” household.

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I think it needs to be clarified that this (and the financial statement on application mentioned in a grandparent comment) are only correct for postgraduate study.

There's no financial statement required for undergraduates because government loans are available to all UK students. This covers tuition and living costs (albeit scaled by parental income). No family needs to "cover tuition" for undergraduates.

People don't work during term time because they are very short (8 weeks) and intense. Plenty of people had work at home during the holidays.

I guess there are some people who have on paper wealthy parents who don't contribute as much as the government thinks they should, but in general lack of familial wealth is really not a barrier to undergraduate study at Oxbridge.

Cambridge at the very least provides reasonably affordable accommodation for all years of your undergraduate degree. And some colleges provide accommodation for Masters and PhD students as well.

The UK student loan is not perfect, but it does include a living stipend (which is family income based). Obviously it sucks to have to take a loan, but working is not a necessity (until after graduation). I’m not sure how reasonable the living stipend amounts are, but Cambridge is definitely reasonably affordable if you go out of the way for groceries etc. It’s a bit more expensive from a nightlife perspective, but again, college bars tend to have fairly cheap drinks.

The loans aren’t great if you are a student not living with their parents and studying outside of London if your parents have a household has a combined income of £45,000 you will be eligible for only £6000 p/a grant.

If we take a £80,000 combined household income which won’t go that far in London especially if the family has more than one child and still paying for a mortgage or what is becoming more and more common these days rent. And while 80K is more than double the median household income this literally can be the salary of say two teachers or police officers with some seniority then you are only eligible for £4000.

For Cambridge last time I checked student accommodations cost £150-200 p/w at the minimum. That more or less your loan gone on housing alone.

The university itself requires the students to have £10,000 (well £9880) per year for living expenses this means that a family making £40K needs to add about £4K or 10% of their pre-tax income to their child’s education even with the stipend.

It’s possible sure but many families simply can’t afford that. And more importantly because students are required to show proof of funds the parents would have to prove that they have that money ready and quite possibly for the entire duration of the degree if their income is too low for the uni to consider them to be able to afford support.

I believe that the financial declaration is for post-graduate courses, and no proof is required for living costs.

That's not only a side effect, but a stated principle: After you gain admission, you have to prove that you have the money you need to sustain yourself either through a scholarship, or you have to literally show a bank statement that shows that you have a lump sum in your account that will sustain you for the normal amount of time it takes to finish the degree. Living expenses are factored into this at a set rate. You are not allowed to rely on funds you intend on earning while you're actually studying.

I don't think this is all that wrong: If you are dependent on working to be able to cover your living expenses, it takes time away from your studies, which reduces the likelihood you'll pass, increases the likelihood of needing more time to get to a degree. Needing more time, means having to spend more time with low-paid jobs to sustain yourself until you get to the degree, and it all adds up to a risk that's difficult to manage for the student, and universities definitely don't want the drop-out rate that results from that.

You wouldn't start building a house when it's uncertain that you have enough money to be able to complete the project.

The way to manage the social ramifications is by keeping tution rates low and providing scholarships. Cost of living is not something you can control particularly well although, at Oxbridge, they at least do what they can on that front through university-owned housing etc. Also: Those are university towns that don't have cost of living and rents spiralling out of control as a side-effect of other industries that are there, like is the case in the Bay Area or Boston, which is a major metropolitan area even without the universities.

The people who get shafted the most by this as I said aren’t “poor” but rather in the middle, the stipend that is available as a loan to students is dependent on the income of the parents and even a £45K household income would limit that stipend to around £6 whilst Oxford requires £10K for affordability and it’s unlikely that most households would be able to make up the difference unless they planned for that and made sacrifices early on in their child’s life and most importantly were lucky enough to able to afford to make those sacrifices consistently.

"You wouldn't start building a house when it's uncertain that you have enough money to be able to complete the project."

Sorry for the completely OT reply, but this triggered me because it is exactly how banks in Thailand do lending to build a house. Once all the details and total cost are known, the bank lends about half of the needed amount and then checks on your progress. If you didn't get about half the house built they don't fund the remainder.

So what happens to the half-built houses? Is it like kit cars, where there's a thriving market for other people's failed projects?

Some of them get finished other ways. Others get taken back by the bank when the owner decides to stop making payments on a loan for an unfinished house. You often see half finished houses that are slowly rotting.

I think that’s common elsewhere as well. A construction loan in the US will work the same way and have a draw schedule that must be followed.

Interesting. I was unaware of that and thought it was a bizarre approach unique to banks in this so-called developing country.

I think it’s needed when the collateral for the loan is something that doesn’t yet exist. If you were to put up something other than your yet to be constructed home as the collateral you could do without a draw schedule. The bank is rightfully concerned that you build your house to the level you described in the plans so that they can recoup their money if you some day default.

>After you gain admission, you have to prove that you have the money you need to sustain yourself either through a scholarship, or you have to literally show a bank statement that shows that you have a lump sum in your account that will sustain you for the normal amount of time it takes to finish the degree.

I think this is for graduate students - the undergraduate student system is different.

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