Thinking about taking time out from your undergraduate course? Let us explain the financial implications

We are in very strange times, and some students may be thinking about giving up their course altogether, or possibly taking a break until things feel a bit more normal. We call suspending your studies ‘intermission’.

We receive a lot of enquiries about the financial implications of this, so here is a general overview of how intermission or withdrawal affects your student loan.

The basics

Student loans are only available to students who are attending and engaged with their course. Students cannot receive loans once they have withdrawn and most cannot access funding whilst they are intermitting.

What happens to fees and the Tuition Fee Loan if a student intermits or withdraws?

 

You will be charged the full amount for any term/s in which you have attended and the university will claim the full Tuition Fee Loan payable for that term. This means that if you are taking time out or leaving during the spring holiday, you will still be liable for the fees for terms 1 and 2 but you will not be charged for term 3 unless you start the term and then decide to intermit after term 3 has started.

What happens to the Maintenance Loan if a student withdraws?

If you leave part way through a course, you cannot keep all of the loan you have received and you will be asked to repay any overpayment to Student Finance immediately. Loan instalments are scheduled for the beginning of the term and intended to last them until the next instalment, but if the you leave part way through, you will have been overpaid, unless you withdraw the day before the next instalment is due. As you will not doubt expect, you won’t be entitled to any further payments of Maintenance Loan.

You will only have to start repaying the loans for terms you attended  in full from the April following the date you leave and once you are earning over the repayment threshold

Students who withdraw will be eligible to apply for benefits from the DWP, such as Universal Credit, and will become liable to pay Council Tax from the date of their withdrawal.

What happens to the Maintenance Loan if a student intermits?

Students who intermit from their course are also usually expected to pay back any loan beyond the last day of their attendance at university and will not receive the next instalment of loan within that academic year.

However, if you take time out because of a health issue, you can be eligible to keep their funding for 60 days beyond the last day of their attendance (not the day you told us about the change). It is important that you contact your Course Leader and Administrator to request they intermit you for health reasons if this is the case.

The university reports this change to Student Finance and they in turn reassess your entitlement, which may or may not result in an overpayment.

What happens to overpayments?

Student Finance will contact you by email or letter telling you you have been reassessed and an overpayment has been generated. They will typically ask you to repay this immediately, so we encourage you to start a dialogue with them if you don’t have the funds to repay straight away. We can help you do this.

Students who intermit cannot apply for Universal Credit, but you won’t have to start paying Council Tax as technically you are still enrolled on the course, albeit not in attendance.

How many years of funding are available?

Student Finance allow an eligible undergraduate student to borrow enough to cover the ordinary length of your course, plus 1 year, minus any years or part-years of previous study at higher education level.

If you take time out of your course and repeat it or part of it in the next academic year, you will have to use that ‘plus 1’ year to receive Tuition and Maintenance Loan when you return. You would then receive funding for the rest of your course as normal, applying each year.

If you have already used your ‘plus 1’ year up, please contact us for help, as you might be able to get an additional year of full funding if you failed or had to leave a previous course for a compelling personal reason.

The Student Advisers are here to help you with all your funding questions.

Student Advice Service