'They expect to have things we never had as students'

Funding a child through college is a lot tougher than it used to be - but it's not impossible

Funding a child through university is not like investing in a new car or holiday home, where the costs are under your control and you have a good idea what they will amount to. By the time they fly the nest for halls of residence, your child has a mind of their own, and their idea of budgeting might not match yours.

So how much is getting their degree likely to set you back? Parents often feel very much in the dark, says Caroline, mother to 19-year-old Oliver who is in his first year studying English at Sussex. "I felt it was wrapped up in mystery. I had no idea what the costs would be. When you talk to other parents they don't tell you."

According to Gwenda Thomas, author of Student Money Matters 2002 (Trotman, £11.99), the average rent is £55 per week, and around £80 in London. Add on another £34 a week for food, and a similar amount for socialising. Don't forget another £130 a year on books, £225 on other equipment, £10 a week on mobile phones, and £260 on clothes. To cut a long bill short, the National Union of Students estimates that the average undergraduate will need some £8,400 in London and £7,000 in other parts of the country – most students leave with a debt of around £12,000 for a three-year course.

Figures like these can come as a shock to many parents. "It's a huge chunk of spending just when you think you're coming to the end of bringing up your kids," says Yvonne, mother to four, whose son is currently at Sheffield studying medicine. "And it's not just the day-to-day costs but things like travel back and forth to college that cost a lot of money. Every time we go up we have to stay the night because it's so far away."

Where will all this cash come from? Inevitably, a sizeable proportion will be from your pocket. Parents are expected to pay fees – this year's maximum is £1,100 – but these are means-tested and half of all students pay none. Of the student loan – now running at a maximum of around £4,000 a year – a quarter is means-tested against parental income.

"It can come as rather a shock to parents when they discover just how much they are expected to pay out, especially if the student's course covers four years," says Thomas, "If you get no assistance with fees, you could be thinking in terms of £6,000-9,000." And research from Barclays, she says, shows that on average parents pay about £600 a year over what they are obliged to pay.

The first issue for most parents is what road are they going down with the student loan, says Yvonne, who decided to take out the maximum. "University is so expensive, and we couldn't fund the whole thing, but some of our friends with more ready cash invested the loan so at the end of the course their child had a nest egg."

The good news is that most students can and do help out. Around 80 per cent work during vacations and some 40 per cent during term-time. "Parents worry about that because it was not like that in their day," says Thomas, "but universities do keep an eye on them and advise them not to work over 15 hours a week."

Anne's son, who has just finished an engineering degree at Manchester, worked all through his course, as a waiter and an office temp. "I am more charitable when people ring up selling double-glazing these days because I know that half of them are students."

But as Yvonne points out, it's not an option for all children. "Lots of kids get jobs but that very much depends on the sort of course they are doing. It's fairly easy on an arts course but if you're studying something like medicine or architecture or engineering, it's another matter. They just don't have the spare time to earn money."

More thorny are issues of just what your child should be spending money on, she says. "Because they've all grown up with such easy lives, they expect to have things we never had as students, like their own TV, DVD and mini-disc players – the whole range of electronic stuff that they now take for granted. And when these things get a bit outdated they think they have a right to replace them. They also run up huge bar bills – the amount students drink these days is unbelievable."

Anne agrees. "If you think they will be happy with the odd jar of Nescafé and the odd half-pint, think again. They expect to continue the lives they had at home – mobile phones, foreign holidays – and it's unrealistic to expect them to do without because we haven't brought them up like that."

Your only leverage at this stage is to refuse to pay for certain things, says Yvonne. "But as you don't really know what they're spending their money on, you can't fine-tune it that much. You just have to let them hit a steep learning curve. A lot go mad in their first term or two and run up horrendous bills, but then they pull back and be more sensible."

In the end all you can do is keep the lines of communication open and try not to worry or interfere too much, advises Thomas: "It's a matter of knowing your own child. Very often the best thing is to pay the bills like rent and fees so you know they have got a roof over their head and a place on their course – then it is a matter of deciding when and how you pay for other things. But all the while accepting that ultimately you can't control what they do."