Second-year studies reveal the facts of financial life: A pounds 750 loan and a pounds 40 deposit on a skeleton

JANIE ANDERSON managed to get nearly all the way through the second year of her medical course at Glasgow University without sliding into debt or taking up the student loan.

But towards the end of the summer term she succumbed and took the full pounds 750 student loan.

'I will need it over the summer. The third term is difficult because the Government asssumes you finish by the eighth week, but medics go on for 10 weeks.

When term ends she will be going on a tour with the Glasgow University Chapel Choir to Prague, following a tour in Lithuania last summer. That costs pounds 160. During the term two Lithuanian girls stayed with Janie as part of the reciprocal arrangements. 'That was very expensive. We fed them a cooked breakfast and a proper tea and had to pay pounds 60 for their spending money.'

She is living in a university flat in a tenement building at a cost of pounds 390 a quarter. 'You have to pay from June to June and I had to pay a pounds 50 deposit.' She has paid some poll tax, but still owes pounds 32.

She spent about pounds 100 on textbooks during the year - a lot less than the pounds 300 she spent in the first year. She also had to pay a pounds 40 deposit on a skeleton, which she will not get back until the summer.

Janie admits that since she has been cooking for herself her diet has deteriorated. 'Meat is expensive. I don't eat enough of the red stuff and I get anaemia, so now I'm taking iron supplements.'

Janie's sister and brother are now at university, so instead of getting no grant at all she now gets half her grant paid by her local authority, Chester, and half comes from her father.

With two daughters at Glasgow University, Mr Anderson has decided to buy a flat for them rather than fork out rent, and they are looking around for one.

Having taken the student loan, Janie now has around pounds 600 in the bank. When she returns from Prague she will be basing herself at home with her parents.