Money is a big bubble of worry in the gut for most students, most of the time.

By choosing a university carefully, they can at least deflate that bubble to the size of a tennis ball.

Different universities cost different amounts, even if the fees are the same.

Living in college usually works out cheaper than renting your own place, but not every university gives you the chance (and only a very few let you live in for your whole degree).

Local costs like travel, entertainments and shopping vary, as do different lifestyles that affect what you spend your money on and therefore how much of it you have.

On average a student outside London needs around £8,990 a year to live on, not including tuition fees. That leaves a shortfall of around £3,000 a year compared to the maximum student loan and grant.

It’s no surprise, then, that the average student has an extra debt of about £1,000 from commercial sources such as overdrafts and credit cards.

London students tend to have the highest debts on average, but the strange thing is that it’s not just costs that affect the level of student debt. A whole bunch of factors drag it around like a rat on a string. Apart from simple costs, here are some of them (but bear in mind they often cancel each other out):

Keeping it lower:

• A high proportion of students living in;
• Good general level of facilities;
• Campus universities;
• Being in a town or city;
• Being in a cheap part of the country;
• Collegiate universities;
• Smaller universities and colleges;
• Availability of paid work locally.

Sending it up:

• A high proportion of students renting privately;
• A banging nightlife;
• Middle-class universities (where students don’t panic about debt so much) — except collegiate universities;
• Poor choice of shops;
• Being in an expensive town — especially London

When choosing a university, you could do a lot worse than eliminate anywhere that you decide you simply can’t afford.

What you can’t afford to do is make the wrong decision., If you drop out, you quite probably won’t be able to afford to go back. Unless you drop out quickly, you will almost certainly lose a year’s funding – that’s a year’s student loan, a year’s grant and possibly even the Government’s contribution to your tuition costs for a year. You’ll also have to pay back any money you’ve borrowed. In other words, there’s funding for you to do a degree, but if you screw up somehow along the way, you may well be paying privately for any extra years it takes.

Yet another good reason to choose the right university in the first place.

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