I'm hoping to do a masters in journalism (12months) and have a question about the career development loan. How much (if anything) do you get towards living expenses and how do the banks work this out? And is it feasible to survive on this together with working a part time job?

You can get £300-8000 with a CDL to pay for fees and living expences. As to whether its enough to live on with a part time job I hope so, its my plan.

Sorry forgot to add its applied for like a personal loan and you request the amount you want its up to one of the banks to decide. Its worth remembering that the only banks that offer true career development loads are Barclays, The Co-operative Bank and The Royal Bank of Scotland.

there's more here

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/AdultLearning/CareerDevelopmentLoans/index.htm

Anyone got any experiance of these? are they a good option?

Thanks Jamie.

AFAIK you can only use a career development loan to pay 80% of your fees, if thats what youre planning on using it for. Personally I went for a loan with Sallie Mae, its a US company thats dealing with certain UK Universities as well (theres a list of participating Unis). You can use the money from that for anything you want including fees (Im lucky enough to have had my fees paid for me so Im not 100% sure on that) and you can borrow more than a CDL would give you.

Some banks won't give you a CDL if they don't consider your course sufficiently 'professional'

I took out a personal loan instead and the interest was significantly lower. It may be difficult getting one of these with a PT job though - they were going to refuse me at first until I made a massive fuss and they gave me the cash

My advice is shop around - my bank was totally crap about the whole thing and I wish I'd gone elsewhere now

Hi, 4 years ago I took out a full £8000 CDL with Barclays to cover the cost of my tuition fees and living expenses to do an MSc. I worked part time for a couple of months and also applied to the University Hardship fund to raise extra money, and sensibly used my student account interest free overdraft facility. It takes a bit of planning and juggling but those 12 months were the best 12 months of my then 27 years on this planet. The only downside is the 5 years it takes to pay it back. I got the job I wanted when I graduated but initial salary for 12 months was low so I really resented losing 181 pound each month out of my wage. However, I don't regret my decision to take out a CDL, if is the only way to fund what you really want...do it!!!

SixKitten that's not true CDLs are for any course, as long as it's accredited by the learning and skills council, which all unis are.

VeryPoor, that is incorrect, a CDL can only be applied for if you are studying for "a vocational course to improve your career prospects", so it is not true that every course qualifies, in fact, the majority of arts based courses probably would not as a bank does not classify these as "vocational"