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Episode 02 of Campus Conversations
Meet the cast
Kate Goodall is a third year BA History student. Her topics of interest are politics, music, history, basketball, student societies, economics and current affairs.
Sophia Mencatelli is a third year BA Comparative Literature with Italian student. Her topics of interests are extracurricular activities, university life, live music and ArtsUCL.
Nadia Ahmed is a fourth year MPharm Pharmacy student. Her topics of interest are Social media, student wellbeing, environmental impacts, student life.
Guest
Josh Du Sautoy
Student Funding Advisors offer support, advice and guidance to students who are struggling with money management or experiencing complex funding issues.
About
Episode 02 dives into finance by interviewing UCL staff. Join Kate, Sophia and Nadia as they ask Josh from the UCL Student Funding team the important questions about finance. Josh talks about financial support and, cost-of living and how students can manage their finances.
Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of our students and do not necessarily reflect the views of UCL.
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Transcript
Episode One: Finance - Let's ask the staff!
00:00:09 - 00:00:16 Nadia
Joining us today is student funding manager Josh who's going to give us a bit of insight into how finances can be managed as a student thanks for coming.
00:00:18 - 00:00:20 Josh
Josh no problem thanks for having me
00:00:20 - 00:00:24 Kate
What are some of the common issues that you see when it comes to students in managing their finances.
00:00:24 - 00:00:57 Josh
Um the answer normally goes into avocado on toast and Ubers and takeaways and the problems that individual uh case-by case um problems that someone might have with managing their finances but what I want to do is kind of get away from that um because this uh Year's cohort of students and to an extent last year's cohort students are facing really unique challenges of how to manage their finances. Do you know how much rent costs have gone up by in the last year just percentage wise? do you know how much?
00:00:57 Tia
No
00:00:57 Josh
So on average in London it's around 9 to 10% whereas the maintenance loan, do you know how much that has increased over the last year?
00:01:06 - 00:01:08 Kate
Not a lot I'm guessing like 1% or something
00:01:08 - 00:02:23 Josh
It's more than that but it is 2.5% so we're entering the, the, um a time when the finances, the Student Finances that a student might take out from Student Finance England, they've got the maintenance loan, they've got the tuition fee loan. We're starting to enter the time when that might not be enough for living expenses especially in London ,especially in if you're living away from your parental home and living in Halls.
So what I would say to students is, if you are experiencing financial hardship I wouldn't um subscribe to the the thought that it's your fault, I wouldn't say it's your fault, you're living in a time when inflation is, although it's now at 2% and 2.5% if you include housing, um is more under control than what it was last year, the rampant rent costs are really making it hard for students to really uh managing their finances. So you asked about what issues I see with students struggling to manage their finances, but I see it as more of a um community problem, more like sector-wide problem, rather than individual cases um and what we're going to be talking about today is what students can do to to help themselves and what they can do too, what we can do to help them as University as well.
00:02:23 - 00:02:26 Tia
When students face money issues, like what can UCL do to support these students?
00:02:26 - 00:04:19 Josh
Uh so I work in the Student Funding Office um and Student Funding team and that has three sections; one is the undergraduate team, one is the postgraduate team and the other one is my section which the which is more to do with student finance uh advice uh and what we offer is a one to one confidential um meeting with students to discuss their financial situation. Um we go over uh what income they've had, what expenditure that they, they will have or they have at the moment and we offer them confidential one to one advice about their options. Um sometimes we do say to students you haven't applied for this funding, you haven't um maybe taken advantage of the funding that's available to you' maybe they don't realise there's a certain scholarship or bursary available to them from UCL um and we can advise them on that and sometimes unfortunately we do say the financial situation you have is not uh really um uh sustainable um for your cost of studies and we we go through them, the situation uh with that in terms of what they can do. They can maybe interrupt their studies and things like that but that's not what we want to to happen but that's just an option we can um talk to them about, um we do also have the Financial Assistance Fund which is a grant from the University of up to £22,500 and it's a grant,as I said you don't have to pay it back, any student can apply, you can apply once per Academic Year at any time in the Academic Year and and you'll be assessed based on your income versus your expenditure, so if your expenditure is higher than your income, and we've talked about how the maintenance loan isn't enough, you may need to get a part time job or if you weren't able to get a part-time job during the Summer or savings or anything to do that or family uh support then the financial assistance fund can help with that as well. But what I'd urge students to do is um reach out to our services, we've got these financial um one to ones like Financial consultations and um that can be really helpful to students.
00:04:19 - 00:04:28 Nadia
So with the cost of living crisis still impacting so many people have you seen arise in students trying to access the financial assistance fund?
00:04:28 - 00:06:38 Josh
Last year we had uh 940 applications and that's obviously UCL is a large institution but for those students to apply for a fund, for like a last resort I'm in in need of money or might have to interrupt or withdraw, that is a large number. However before covid going back to all the way to 2018/19 it was only 411 students applying then, of course Covid happened and uh we had an explosion of applications of 1,387 um but that's kind of like you know, whilst Covid is not really uh as as large a problem financially anymore the cost of living crisis has taken over from that unfortunately so students have just uh come through Covid maybe when if they're at school and now they have to deal with the cost of living crisis, it's reallyunfair on students. Um but this year, we've had over 1300 applications again, so um we've had students applying from the very start. So it opens up in October and we anticipate that they'll continue to apply right until the end of the Academic Year. Um undergraduates, they have been applying all year and postgraduates as well even postgraduate research students who are doing you know um a longer course than a Master's may need to apply as well so we definitely have seen um an increase in applications.
What we always said with the financial assistance fund is that something unforeseen must have happened in order for you to apply, so maybe you've had an accident you've uh you know you broken your leg so you can't go to work you um you've uh had un something unforeseen with your family, family support um suddenly disappearing, maybe you've had abereavement as well um but lately what we're saying to students is that the cost of living crisis is basically unforeseenand everyone is in a a bad situation um at the start of the year so you don't necessarily have to have something major happen in your life in order to make an application for Financial Assistance Fund apply as soon as you you want to really but it's something that is just, it's available for students um and we're not going to say um that students shouldn't apply because the cost living crisis is just unforeseen, it's really hard on students.
00:06:39 - 00:06:56 Kate
As you said there's quite a small proportion of people that are applying for the Financial Assistance Fund out of the kind of you know massive UCL population um and you know applying and registering for support especially when it comes to financial concerns can often be very daunting so is there any like particular advice you could potentially kind of give out to students?
00:06:56 - 00:08:26 Josh
We are open all year um as I said all all Academic Year from October to basically from October to October is what we say. Um students may think that because it's daunting they might put it off um but we do run out of money sometimes, we are beginning to run out of money at the moment just because we spent so much on students and we spent over a million pounds on um student hardship funds uh this year and last year so it is um necessary for students to apply as soon as they feel like they're in financial hardship.
Don't feel that because you have enough um until you know next week that you're not in financial hardship, if you feel like you are going to be in financial hardship for any part of the academic year then please do apply, what we do as part of the calculation measuring your income against in against your expenditure is that we measure for the whole of the year so it's not like you can apply in October and the result would be £1,000 Grant and then if you applied in April it would be something completely like larger than that or smaller than that, it would be the same amount we're looking at the whole the year as a whole.
So as a result of that it doesn't really matter when you apply and it doesn't mean that you should wait the only uh reason you should wait perhaps is if you think that you can manage it yourself but there's no um issue with it coming in to see us for financial consultation just to check that your finances are okay, um I would say don't wait for applying for the Financial Assistance Fund, just apply as soon as you can.
00:08:26 - 00:08:28 Tia
Do you have any tips for students to become more financially responsible?
00:08:29 - 00:11:20 Josh
Yeah so as part of uh my role we could, we do give workshops uh to students um about money management um and planning your finances over the course of the year um. There are tips on our on our website onthe UCL website about the cost of living and how to manage that, um weevery year we have like a national student money week to give tips to students about how to manage their finances I would say the main thing is to prepare for the year um if they're if they're coming into UCL in September, then spend the start of September going over your finances making sure that you are not going to be um spending more than you have coming in, um making sure you've applied to all you can apply for um make a budget that will that suits your lifestyle um there are many websites um money savings expert is a good one for um helping you to um make a budget but also can give you tips on what kind of tariffs to get in terms of know uh electricity gas if you're living away from um home and in Halls and you have that responsibility for the first time.
See what other people, what other students uh um what other tips they've got um through the UCL uh website but also uh forums as well um and just prepare I think you wouldn't want to get to University and suddenly realise you haven't prepared for your finances because a lot of the scholarships and bursaries close in July and maybe some even beforehand so what we do ask for students or do advise students is just to prepare as much as they can. It's it's not exciting to make you know to always buy Supermarket brand um uh groceries um and food and clothes and things like that but what we do see a lot is um students sometimes especially first year students and this is not to to um call them out or anything but they are away from home for the first time a lot of them they've got maybe three thousand pounds or £4,000 in one go in their bank account, what a a good idea is to separate um your funding pots you know if you have a Monzo bank account you can separate them into different pots this is for rent, this is for food, this is for shopping anything to do with that that can basically um help you manage your finances because it can be um quite daunting for someone to have 3,000 or 4,000 in their bank account and not know what to do with it.
Um there's no pressure on moving it or anything if you don't want to but a lot of students that I've seen um they do have a separate account they do have a savings account that they move everything over and then when they're out with their cards shopping that is their uh current account that's not their savings account so they can't spend £3,000 in the shops or if it gets stolen it adds an extra level of security because if it does get stolen that's not your savings account money that is your current account money.
00:11:20 - 00:11:25 Nadia
so if students want to get in touch with you how would that work?
00:11:25 - 00:12:08 Josh
So if you're at UCL and you've already started then of course you have access to Portico and have access to ask UCL you can set up a funding query within ask UCL which will come straight to us and we will get back to you uh within two working days um if you do require an appointment um we can work around your schedule um and that could be a phone appointment in uh face to face in person or uh over Microsoft Teams um as well so however you want to meet with us you can and we're quite flexible with that if you're not able to access ask UCL for example if you're a perspective student then you can just email student funding ucl.ac.uk and we will get back to you.