Part time jobs

Birthday and Christmas presents

Second hand items

Sponsorship

Fundraising events

Think before you spend

Service jobs

Skilled positions

How many hours?

How to save

Create a budget and stick to it

Cut costs where possible

• Get a student bank account. Compare services and charges of different banks. Overdraft limits and related charges are essential matters to investigate before choosing a bank
• Authors of books like Beyond Baked Beans Budget; How to Boil an Egg; and The Classic 1000 Student Recipes have taken advantage of poor undergraduate students who deserve proper nutrition without a hefty price tag
• Look for discounts whenever and wherever possible
• Many shops, restaurants, and bars offer discounts to undergraduate students
• Don’t just choose any old utility company to run your electricity, gas, telephone, or Internet – do some research! Get online and compare prices. In the long run, utility bills can add up.
• If you can’t afford a nice haircut, go to a trainee. Most hair salons need ‘hair models’ and the trainees are supervised by experienced hairdressers.

When you need a loan (and have to repay it)

Undergraduate scholarships for study abroad

Scholarship applications

(The below is adapted from Chapter 1 of The Student Finance Vigilante)

Let’s try something.  Who has ever thought, “It is OK to spend a little extra now because I’ll be earning soon”?  Hands right up, please.

It is a common assumption amongst many students.  After all, even a starting wage of £18,000 sounds attractive when you are earning nothing.  Ever day-dreamed about the years after university?  What do you want to do?  What are you looking forward to?  By the age of 30, what do you think you will have in your life?..... A partner?  Kids?  Probably a home, right?  Regular holidays, a nice car and to be settled into a good job paying a nice salary?  Comfort and a good standard of living.  Who knows what you are hoping for? It’s all your life, they are all your dreams.

But all these dreams require money.  Perhaps not much – we are not suggesting that you have to go out all guns blazing to become mega rich!  Some people just want to be comfortable.  And that’s fine.

The simple fact is this. Let’s say you graduate when you are 22.  Imagine you have a £17,000 debt, and you are paying £100 a month off your bank loan.  Your student loan repayments are increasing with a generous salary increase every year, but: it will still take you until you are 29 to have paid it all off.  Life, it seems, will begin at 29.

What?  Rubbish, right?  Well, let’s take a deep breath and spend some time on the complicated stuff before we move on to what to do about it in later chapters.

The First Great Assumption: I Will Not Be In That Much Debt

In our research we have looked at the spending habits of students and produced a model showing the potential income and spending patterns of both a Big Spender student and a Low Spender student during three years at university.  The results were shocking.

They showed that a Big Spender, who does not try too hard to cut costs, who goes out quite a lot, and who regularly treats themselves, is likely to come out of university after three years with a debt of £28,159.  This is an extremely scary figure, equivalent to a person’s salary before tax for an entire year in a well paid graduate job three years after university!  But, of course, it is the Big Spender, so you have nothing to worry about.  Right?

We looked at those who cut their costs back to the bone, who still went out, but spent less.  The Low Spender student was one who walked instead of getting the bus, made sandwiches at home instead of always eating at the union, who avoided certain luxuries and lived smart.  They still came out with a debt of £12,520. 

However it is quite difficult to be cost cutting every minute of the day and it is more likely that a large number of students will leave university with a slightly higher debt, say £17,000.

The average student debt upon leaving university in 2005 was £12,640, according to NatWest.  Barclays survey found it came to about £13,501. This is below our ‘low spending’ student outcome, but it is worth remembering that the ‘average’ encompasses a lot of students that get help from their parents. Our calculations for the low spending student are based on a student that only gets help with their tuition fees. We have tried to simulate a scenario with little parental help.

It is therefore difficult for anyone to look at an average figure and deduce, “that is what I am going to leave with.”  Instead, we invite you to download our models from The Student Finance Vigilante (TSFV) website www.studentfinancevigilante.co.uk along with TSFV’s Money Tracker to enable you to do your own budgeting, and play with the figures to see where you may fall. (You can purchase this package now at www.studentfinancevigilante.co.uk. By entering the code SFVTOP, you will receive 20% off the Student Finance Vigilante)

The Second Great Assumption: It Is Easy To Pay Off Debt When You Are Earning

Although we have already noted that it is difficult to assume anything from an ‘average’ figure, it can be useful as an assumption.  Unfortunately, if you ask a different person, you get a different answer.  NatWest surveyed graduates about their starting salaries in 2005 and found that the average was £14,090.  The Association of Graduate Recruiters asked several hundred graduate recruiters in 2005 and found that the average starting salary was £20,783 in large corporations – but this varied between a low of £14,500 and a high of £28,500. 

Let us imagine that you will start on something in between; say £18,000. 

Of course, £18,000 is not how much you actually get.  In one year, at 2004 rates, on an £18,000 salary, you will pay £2,680 in income tax, £1,459 in National Insurance and £720 as your mandatory student loan repayment.  These all usually come out before you receive your pay cheque. In other words you only get 73% of your salary!

So, you are left with £13,141 a year.  Your big bills would be rent (say, £3,500 a year, leaving you with £9,641), council tax (another £1,000 but it is increasing all the time, leaving you with £8,647). Then there is travel to your job, basic living costs such as food, your bills such as water, gas and electricity, insurance, pension, clothes for work… All in all, on a salary of £18,000 you will probably be left with a couple of hundred pounds to actually spend per month.  If you owe anything over and above your student loan (and if you owe £17,000 you will probably owe someone other than the Student Loans Company £7,000 of that), you have to find money to pay it off out of the remaining amount.

It is also worth remembering that this does not account for the £10,000 of your student loan, which is also growing for every day you have not paid it all off.  It may have taken you seven and a half years – or until you are over 29 – until you have paid the £7,000 off, but it may take you even longer to pay off your student loan.  This is because on low salaries the amount you pay off is also low.

If you were to stick at a salary of £20,000 for the rest of your life, your mandatory student loan repayments will not reach beyond £900 a year, and it would take you until you are 35 to pay it all off at 3% interest.  You could make other payments to speed it up, but on a £20,000 salary, it is unlikely that you would be able to afford to.  Of course, most people have salaries rising over time – thankfully!

On the sort of timescales we are talking about here, for every few hundred pounds more you spend ‘just because’ whilst at university, it escalates with interest over many, many years and suddenly that television you bought becomes a lot more expensive.  £200 spent can easily become £300 in the long run, when accumulated with other debt and paid off over the years. 

We noted interest can be your friend, and we meant it.  High interest rates and compound interest can make any money you save breed faster than student house termites, but that is probably some time away for the moment!

The above passage has been adapted from chapter one of ‘The Student Finance Vigilante'. By ordering the book now at www.studentfinancevigilante.co.uk and entering the promotional code SFVTOP you will save 20%.

The Student Finance Vigilante has been set up to tackle the massive problem of debt that is facing students at university today; an increasing problem that will haunt many for a decade after university.

Nowhere is higher education in a greater state of flux than in Germany. Despite 230,900 students graduating from German institutions of higher education in 2004, a 6% increase on the previous year, the university sector is as close to crisis point than it has ever been before. The average time for those completing their first degree was six years at universities and four and a half years at technical institutions, at a time when those graduating UK institutions complete in half the time and enter the labour market at a much younger age. Whereas the average age for UK graduates is between 21 and 22, their German counterparts are closer to 28. Tough decisions face German universities to make themselves more competitive and relevant to one of Europe’s giant, but currently stagnating economies.

"Whereas the average age for UK graduates is between 21 and 22, their German counterparts are closer to 28. Tough decisions face German universities to make themselves more competitive and relevant to one of Europe’s giant, but currently stagnating economies."

Demands for institutions to consider the introduction of market rate tuition fees, combined with the effects of the 1998 Bologna Declaration, indicate that this could be a moment of great change in German higher education. Peter Gaethgens, president of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), views the tuition fee debate as particularly central to the reform of German universities. At a time when many universities require increased levels of state funding where there is little budget, tuition fee income represents an opportunity to upgrade ailing facilities, “the prohibition of fees was a competitive disadvantage. We urgently need to improve the quality of our teaching and fees allow us to do this.”

Since the signing of the Bologna Declaration in 1999, efforts by a range of European agencies have now resulted in the establishment of a ‘European Higher Education Area’ – a single geographic space that stretches from Galway to Vladivostock. Opening up such a vast area presents a unique opportunity for students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels to travel more freely and gain a hugely diverse educational experience resulting in a transportable and internationally recognised qualification at the end of their studies – either undergraduate or graduate. Never before have the education systems of so many different European countries been made accessible and interchangeable for the benefit of the individual student.

Central to the changes related to Bologna is the resolution that all signatories should adopt a higher education system based on easily readable and comparable degrees in order to promote employability and the international competitiveness of the European higher education system. In short, the old system of lengthy German bachelors degrees and academic and professional postgraduate qualifications will be replaced by a standardised structure for the duration of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and will be implemented allowing all students to study for a minimum of three years at the undergraduate level and one year at the postgraduate level. Students will benefit from both a consistent structure of programmes across the entire Area and a greater understanding by employers as to the value and content of qualification obtained. As awareness of Bologna grows amongst students, those institutions not offering the new style programmes are likely to lose out to those – in any European country – that are. How will this benefit Germany and German students? Put simply, the previous system of lengthy and incomprehensible qualifications will be replaced by a unified system, easily understood by locals and international students alike and potential employers. Moreover, at the postgraduate level German institutions will be able to offer the more commonly recognised masters degree, taught over one or two years, and compete in the global market for the best postgraduate students with UK, US and Australian universities.

"The old system of lengthy German bachelors degrees and academic and professional postgraduate qualifications will be replaced by a standardised structure."

German institutions have been slow off the mark compared with other European countries. In the Netherlands for instance, Bologna-friendly undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes have been commonplace since 2002. Universities like Tilburg, Leiden and Groningen have a full range of undergraduate programmes of three years duration and will be making one-year masters degrees available next year. Moreover, Bologna has facilitated the introduction of programmes taught in English. Ten out of the 13 institutions in the country currently offer more that half of their postgraduate programmes exclusively in English with six offering close to all of their degrees in English, making the education system second to the UK in Europe for the number of courses taught in English. The effects are clear – more international students chose The Netherlands as their destination for study in 2005 than ever before.

Simeon Underwood, Academic Registrar at the London School of Economics and Political Science and advisor on Bologna to one of the world’s leading universities, is in no doubt as to the impact Bologna will have on both students and institutions throughout Europe, “an unprecedented number of choices will face the new generation of postgraduate students – whether to stay in one country for the entire period of their qualification or sample a range of courses and teaching systems throughout Europe. Higher education will become a buyers market – with all the benefits that brings to the buyer in question. German students will benefit from this structure just as many other students will, but German institutions need to match the pace set by some of her European sisters.”

Many of the changes in contemporary international higher education are undoubtedly driven by two factors; firstly, the drive to internationalise and secondly, the need to commercialise. Most German institutions have for a number of years been ambivalent to at least one of these factors and in some cases, both of them but are now becoming more aware of their respective importance. In a European sense, Bologna comprehensively represents both of these factors. Internationalisation is one of the key buzzwords of university education the world over at the moment and forms a central limb of Bologna. In some cases, say for example in the USA, efforts to internationalise revolve around a complex set of issues such as diplomacy, the image of the country post 9/11 and the need to change university curricula to be more internationally facing. In others, such has been the case in Germany, has been the active participation in global student exchange schemes like ERASMUS and SOCRATES, which have changed the educational outlook and experience of hundreds of thousands of German undergraduate and graduate students. Commercialisation of higher education, either through the active marketing and “selling” of institutions and their degree programmes or through the branding and value acquisition of knowledge-related products emerging from universities has been an emerging trend for the last decade and has gathered pace in recent years with the need of many institutions to seek alternative sources of income in the face of declining Government subsidies. German institutions have actively participated in the international market for the recruitment of students either individually or through the efforts of the Government agency, DAAD with good results. An estimated 230,000 international students are currently enrolled on degree awarding programmes within German universities and colleges and Germany as a destination for postgraduate studies is becoming popular. A recent survey by QS Research, based on a sample of 1,566 potential postgraduate masters and research candidates, carried out in association with the QS World Grad School Tour found that 22% of respondents indicated they wished to study for a postgraduate qualification in Germany, more than those wanting to study in Spain or The Netherlands.

The quality of German higher education remains unquestioned. But in this era of reform and student-centred learning and choice, the introduction of tuition fees and the Bologna Declaration must be seen as an opportunity by all degree awarding institutions to improve their educational provision, their quality and their market competitiveness. The reality of tuition fees is that in countries where they have been introduced, universities have benefited, often financially, but more likely in terms of their perceived reputation and competitiveness in what is now one of the most international markets in the world today. The reality of Bologna is that with over a quarter of all German courses already conforming to the new structure, the ball is already rolling and heading for a more accessible and more easily understood system of higher education.