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Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.
So, last time we were talking about part time jobs for students and you were sharing with us your quite unsuccessful or successful experience working part time.
Yes, as a waiter I worked for about maybe 4, 5 weeks...
And got fired.
I wasn't fired.
You were asked to leave.
I was just told not to come back. There is a difference.
But you were a pretty successful tour guide.
Yes. I wasn't fired from that job.
But we also talked about in our previous episode on expenses for students, we talked about how expensive our universities and do parents pay for their kids’ education. And we ended up talking about 70% of British university students have student loan. I don't know if this is the latest figure, but this figure is relatively new. Do you mind if I asked, did you have student loan when you were in universe?
Yeah. Back then you only had one loan and that was just called student loan. But now you have two different types of loan. You have a tuition fee loan, which is the loan directly for your tuition fees.
就是学费的贷款.
This is paid directly to the university. And for everyday expenses, rent and all of that, you have the maintenance loan.
就好像生活费的贷款. Parents don't help at all?
It depends. It really does. But I can talk a little bit about my own experience. So because I was working, I only really took out the money as a loan to pay for my tuition fee. That's because my first year at university I lived in halls (学生宿舍), I should use my savings to pay the fees to live in halls, and I worked to get a little bit of that extra money. And the second and third year I lived at home. So I would say in that type of situation is quite common. My parents didn't ask me for rent or I didn't have to chip in for food and drink and things like that.
I see. So they don't give you money per se.
You don't get pocket money.
But they basically in a way subsidized your living because they allow you to live under their roof without charging you. They don't charge you for food when you stayed at home that sort of thing. I see.
And there are some parents that do give an allowance to their kids, but I would say that's not seen as a good thing, that's not seen as something the children would be particularly proud of.
So they're not gonna go around and say, my mom and my dad they just give me£5,000. They're not gonna do that.
No, because people would actually judge them because the whole idea of being at university is that you are becoming more independent. So that's why lots of university students they're trying to go to universities probably a bit further away from where they live.
I see.
I can take my niece for example. At the moment she's looking at universities that are completely in different cities from where she lives now. Because she wants to be independent, she wants to have her own life.
I can relate to that actually. So when I was choosing universities, when I was in high school, I also it's not really like running away from your parents because you don't like your parents. It's more like you want to prove that you can make it on your own.
Exactly. And I would say for 17, 18-year-olds in the UK, they don't look at themselves as children anymore. They want to start live in a more independent life and that's something that is actively encouraged.
So it's not about how much allowance their parents would give them. It's more like how much they can earn and what kind of life they can live.
Now bringing it a little bit back to student loan. Can anyone like, can anyone living, or British national, can anyone apply and get it approved?
Yes, the maintenance loan is means-tested though.
Means-tested?
So that means they do award you a loan based on your household income and where you're studying. So for example, if you're living in London, then you get more money.