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Parents Carry The Burden Of Student Loans

Higher Education is a vital part of life if you want to get the professional job you always dreamed of - however many students today are forgoing university simply because of the financial burden that it poses. It is estimated that at the end of a three-year degree course a student will have amassed somewhere between £14,000 and £20,000 worth of debt that they then have to pay back before they begin to profit from working. In addition, the annual cost of living in places such as London is over twice that of the maximum student loan and so many students have no choice but to take out extra bank loans and overdrafts just to survive.

However, it would seem that recently the financial burden is being picked up more and more often by the parents, thus leaving the student to concentrate on their education. In a recent study conducted by the Halifax, nearly half of the people interviewed said that they were supporting their children while at university so that they didn't have the burden of taking out a student loan. Many also said that they would prefer to have the financial burden laid on them as opposed to their children.

After conducting nearly a thousand interviews, it was found that parents were using a variety of ways to cover the financial burden for their children. Over 30% of parents were either considering or had already taken on more hours, or had taken a second job to produce the extra income, while over two thirds had given up luxuries such as holidays to pay for their child's living costs.

A significant number of parents said that they would consider or had already taken out a personal loan to save their children from getting a student loan. Various parents said that they would much prefer to pay the loan off themselves while their child was still at university, so that at graduation neither they nor their children were in any great financial debt. In addition, the parents mentioned that they felt happier knowing that they were not under any extra pressure to work long hours or a second job.

The government initiative that now gives the parents of each new-born child a sum of money to invest for the future and the child's university life is a positive step forward however students of today are finding it increasingly difficult to cope without the financial help of their parents.