Cheapest university revealed!

Report reveals price of everything from accommodation to a pint of beer at 20 institutions

St Andrews is the cheapest of the group, whilst UCL is the most expensive.

Here's the full breakdown. Apparently it's £5.25 for a pint at Surrey!!

They seem to have left Hull off the list - I'm pretty sure that's actually the cheapest place to go to uni. :wink:

Anyone got any other suggestions...?

EDIT: Beer prices come from here - a pretty unrealiable source which calculates average prices based on user input. So I'd take that column with a pinch of salt :wink:

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 1

SecretDuck

Not surprised about St Andrews being the cheapest :tongue:

Reply 2

Puddles the Monkey

Original post by SecretDuck

Not surprised about St Andrews being the cheapest :tongue:

Looks like it came out top because of low insurance prices. :yy:

Reply 3

NebulousBlue

Durham has the cheapest beer :smile:

Reply 4

Puddles the Monkey

Original post by NebulousBlue

Durham has the cheapest beer :smile:

To be honest, the price of beer is all I'd really be concerned about :erm:

And accommodation I suppose. But beer price is a pretty good indication of cost of living overall maybe?

Interesting...

Original post by Puddles the Monkey

Anyone got any other suggestions...?

Just so you know, it really isn't that much on campus - that might be the cost in town, but it's not at the Students' Union :smile:

Reply 7

Puddles the Monkey

Original post by University of Surrey

Just so you know, it really isn't that much on campus - that might be the cost in town, but it's not at the Students' Union :smile:

Yes - must be an average price in town that they've worked out somehow.

EDIT: Yep, they got it from here. Seems a bit unreliable....

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 8

University of Surrey

Official Rep

Original post by Puddles the Monkey

Yes - must be an average price in town that they've worked out somehow.

EDIT: Yep, they got it from here. Seems a bit unreliable....

It does indeed - still not sure how they've worked it out!

Reply 9

Puddles the Monkey

Original post by University of Surrey

It does indeed - still not sure how they've worked it out!

Looks like it's based on average prices which are submitted by the general public. There's only 10 submissions for Guildford and one of them's for £0.10p - hmm!

Reply 10

Nymthae

They could've done a bit of a better geographical spread. It's not exactly surprising both UCL, Imperial and LSE are at the bottom of that. Probably would be better to have included a few more like Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool...

Is there any particular weighting to certain criteria? As in, car insurance is a useless measure to most people (especially in London), but every student needs accommodation and rather classically will go into halls during first year.

Reply 11

alone-in-kyoto

Original post by Puddles the Monkey

This couldn't be further from the truth; the accommodation at St Andrews is on a par with London prices as supply massively outweighs demand, sometimes it is impossible to find accommodation and people are forced out of the town.

Reply 12

Champagne Supernova

I optimistically looked at this considering I went to a uni in the SE. :rolleyes:

Not at all surprised to see UCL being classed as the most expensive though, given it's location...

Reply 13

username219321

This study seems like a load of figures for local areas around universities thrown together and doesn't take into account how students at the universities actually live.
Just going through the figures given left to right - I can't see how car insurance is particularly relevant as most universities strongly discourage cars.
The price of home contents insurance doesn't take into account that some halls include it and it's often cheaper to insure one person's stuff in halls with special student companies that don't show up on a general search than an entire house (I don't remember paying anything near £152pa for mine).
The two crime ranks - again, not many students have cars, and the ones that do often park it in a secure campus car park a lot of the time. Also, it's not clear what it means by "2.5 mile radius" - is that from the central office of the university or an average of all areas within 2.5 miles of any university building? It also doesn't take into account the fact not all students live within 2.5 miles of the university, or that security is often higher on university campuses than in surrounding areas.
The accommodation cost also is also misleading; it says it takes the cheapest ensuite, despite the fact that most students don't live in properties with ensuites, and many universities offer term time only tenancies in the more expensive campus halls, closing the gap slightly over the year.
Can't really say too much about the beer price except it's common for the prices to be much less in the places students actually go to than the places locals go to, but they have used a figure from a website that isn't just for students.