Sources of funding - Student loans
Student Loans for part-time students
If you are a home or EU student starting one of our undergraduate courses in Autumn 2013, and do not already have an undergraduate degree, you may apply for a non means-tested loan student loan to cover all or part of your fees.
You can find information on repayment of loans and an application form on the Student Finance England website.
The Department would encourage prospective applicants to consider taking out a student loan to cover their tuition fees. Whether you do so or not is of course entirely up to you, but, for many students, it would be financially advantageous to do so – some will not have to repay anything. The details of the student loan are unfortunately quite complex, but here are some key facts:
- You become liable to repay the loan in the April four years after starting your course or in the April after completing of your course, whichever is the sooner, though not before April 2016 in any case;
- You only start to repay your loan when you are earning more than a threshold amount – currently £21,000 pa;
- If your earnings drop below this threshold, you cease to make repayments;
- The rate of repayment is independent of the amount of the loan, being fixed at 9% of your income above £21,000. So if you earn £25,000, you repay £360 a year, or £30 a month;
- You may repay your loan in full or part at any time without incurring any penalty;
- After 30 years your loan will be written off ;
- If you die before repaying your loan it is also written off.
N.B. The information given here applies to students resident in England: slightly different conditions may apply to those resident in other parts of the UK.
There is plenty of useful information on loans on the Student Finance England website, including a repayment calculator that will help you estimate how much you would repay.
In addition, The Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information has produced a series of useful part-time student finance materials to help you understand the implication of taking out a student loan:
- A guide in pdf format: You Can Afford To Go To Uni
- A video featuring Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com, and head of the Taskforce
- A student finance calculator from MoneySavingExpert.com which enables prospective part-time students to work out what they would pay back.
The two calculators appear to use different assumptions about future financial trends – such as the rate at which your income, and the ‘£21,000’ threshold may increase – and these can dramatically affect the apparent repayments. The Department is unable to offer financial advice, but we would point out that, if you never earn above the £21,000 threshold, you would never make any repayments, and the loan would be written off after 30 years.
Please note the correct name and address for the Department when completing the student loan application form is:
University of Oxford - Continuing Education
Rewley House
1 Wellington Square
Oxford
OX1 2JA
Please remember to include 'Continuing Education' in the first line, as this helps to distinguish applications for our courses from those applying for full-time degrees.