During enrolment, we’ll ask you how you’re paying your tuition fees. It’s important to sort your fees payments as soon as possible and we’ve made it even easier to spread any payments across the year.
Student Finance for Home Students
If you’re paying for your fees with a student loan, make sure that you have sorted your student finance arrangements and let us know during your enrolment. Hopefully, your application for a tuition fee loan and maintenance loan (if you even are applying for these) will be long gone. But you can still apply now or contact Student Finance England to let them know anything that might have changed.
You can even try to work out just how much you will receive from Student Finance England if you take out a maintenance loan. If you know how much your student loan will be, you know how much you have to spend! Check out the student finance calculator online.
If you’re an undergraduate student, your tuition fees will be paid directly to BCU in three instalments. However, if you’re a postgraduate student, your fees will be paid to you in three instalments, so you’ll need to ensure this is paid to BCU as soon as you receive it.
Getting your first maintenance loan payment
Here's a checklist of things you need to do before you'll get your first maintenance loan payment when you start.
Self-funded
If you’re self-funded, we’ll send you an invoice to your BCU email address. Once you’ve received this, you can either pay your fees online or set up an instalment plan to spread the cost across the year using the BCU student invoice payment portal.
Log in to the invoice payment portal
You’ll have to set up a card payment plan for your invoice, and the payments will be made automatically on the due date.
Tuition Fee Payment Policy
Find out more about payment options and deadlines in our Tuition Fee Payment Policy,
which you can find in the Student Contract.
International students
International students are required to pay a £4,000 deposit as secure online payment. You will be required to pay 50 per cent of your tuition fees as part of your enrolment, and you can either pay the other 50 per cent on receipt of your invoice or enter into a three or six instalment plan.
We can only accept course fees in Pounds Sterling, and we do not accept cash payments. There are four payment methods for paying your course fees, which you can see in our International section.
Options for international fees
Sponsorship
If your fees are being paid by a sponsor, you’ll need to provide a letter from your approved sponsor during enrolment. Your sponsor letter must:
- Be on the sponsor’s official letterhead
- Clearly state the full student name·
- Include your student number
- Include the sponsored amount or the proportion of the fees sponsored
- Provide the academic years for sponsorship (clearly stated if multiple years)
- Provide details of the course or programme
- Provide full details of where the invoice should be sent, including Sponsor contact name, details, postal address and e-mail address
- Be signed by the person authorising the sponsorship
- Provide any reference number or purchase order for the organisation sponsoring
- Meet the requirements of the apprenticeship contract
Money management and budgeting
Have you ever paid rent before? Ever done the weekly food shop? How much does a four-pack of Heinz baked beans cost?
Budgeting is huge before, during and even after university. Getting a budget in place early and forecasting your spending will make your time much easier, so you’re not scraping by at the end of each month.
We’ve even put together a helpful little budgeting calculator, so you don’t need to create one yourself.
Help with money worries
Our Money Advice and Childcare team is on hand to help you with any worries you might have about finances. The team can help with everything from Student Finance to accessing welfare benefits and childcare support. If you’re having money trouble the first thing to do is get in touch with the Student Support team for advice.