Although tuition fees are the easiest figures to identify and discuss, they constitute only a small part of overall living expenses, if any, since recurring payments are much more substantial and difficult to estimate or research.
If you are to study in Melbourne for a year, remember that your weekly expenses will most probably exceed the official government visa calculation ($24505 or approximately 471 AUD per week for a single student).
This is the bare minimum needed to qualify for a 12-month student visa, and it is far from being enough to cover one’s expenses.
This article aims to provide you with an insight into the real cost of a Melbourne-based education and its average annual cost range.
Tuition is the easy item
Tuition fees are an item that appears only a couple of times a year, compared to weekly or monthly living expenses, which is another reason families fixate on it. You can Google the approximate costs in advance and put it all together in an Excel sheet.
Meanwhile, living expenses feature a dozen or so components, some of which are hard to estimate, especially for inexperienced travelers or their parents.
Moreover, some costs are bound to exceed your initial planning and appear only in the middle of the academic year, when it is too late to amend your yearly family budget. New bills that are not part of tuition, such as unforeseen textbook purchases, may also arise. All the expenses unrelated to tuition are much harder to plan, and the only real solution is to treat them as a single large category that is at least as significant as tuition itself.
Where to live? It defines the rest
There is usually one item in the student budget that defines the planning of the rest and serves as the primary expense driver: the place to live. Where you choose to reside defines the weekly or even monthly costs of food, transport, utilities, and other expenses, as well as the number of hours you will have to spend on menial tasks.
The range for this particular item in Melbourne is quite broad: from less than 200 AUD for a shared house far from the campus to over 400 AUD for a residential college with all meals included.
At first glance, the cheaper option is obviously better, but upon closer inspection, you will notice that the differences between bundled and unbundled expenses may be significant.
First of all, note that both private and college accommodations have expenses that are not covered by rent.
If you are to sign a private rental contract, you will most likely have to pay the bond and the agency fee upfront, in addition to the weekly rent. You will also be responsible for gas, electricity, water, and internet, as well as food, transport, and other sundries. All of these have to be paid separately and usually have their own billing schedule.
Meanwhile, students comparing Melbourne residential colleges may find more transparent, bundled payment options. Essentially, the weekly rent covers most, if not all, of your additional expenses: food, utilities, cleaning, maintenance, study spaces, and even personal counseling in some colleges. You will still have to pay for textbooks, transport within the campus, and personal entertainment separately, but they will constitute a much smaller percentage of your overall weekly or monthly expenses.
So, as you can see, the 400 AUD per week in a college accommodation may not be much different from 500 AUD in private rental. It all depends on the extra expenses, which can differ significantly from region to region and from college to college. Therefore, it is best to take a sample weekly student budget for Melbourne to have a general idea of the figures you may expect to pay every week.
Costs that come as a surprise
Once you choose your place of residence, there are three more areas that can take you by surprise with their costs.
First of all, be prepared to spend approximately 50-80 AUD per week on utilities, and this range may vary significantly depending on the season. Most rental accommodations in Melbourne are electric, and there is no one to control heating or air conditioning, which means that your bills can be as high as 100-150 AUD in extreme weather. At the same time, keep in mind that one of your flatmates may be paying for all the utilities with your collective approval. If so, he or she can be significantly out-of-pocket for several months.
Second, plan to spend about 80-120 AUD per week on food. This expense may vary widely depending on how often you intend to eat at home versus how often you will have to eat out. If you are to cook in a shared house, remember that the one whose bills serve as the basis for the equal distribution among residents may find themselves out-of-pocket for utilities and groceries. It is better to discuss this nuance in advance and agree on separate payments for food and utilities.
Finally, transportation costs should also be taken into account when calculating your weekly or monthly Melbourne-based expenses. If you can manage to live in the city or at least close to the campus, you may not need any transportation at all. However, if you have to rely on public transport to commute to your university from the suburbs, plan to spend 1500-2500 AUD per year on tickets, or 300-500 AUD per month. This cost should be carefully balanced against the time spent on the commute. After all, a 3-hour ride to campus for a 4-hour exam preparation session may become too much for you to handle a few weeks before the test.
Expenses that come sporadically
Most students fail to plan for these bills because they appear only once or twice a year, but they can be surprisingly expensive and come when you least expect them. For example, course books, software subscriptions for online learning, and course materials in general can be as expensive as 500-1000 AUD per semester, depending on the subject. Engineering and science students, for example, may have to spend more than 750 AUD on average on textbooks alone per semester, while humanities students will have to spend somewhere between 400-500 AUD. Of course, everyone wishes to be in the latter group, studying subjects with no heavy course books and using only digital materials.
Do not forget to set aside money for OSHC, with an average cost of 450-600 AUD per semester.
Moreover, remember to count on several other expenses associated with the extras at the university: mandatory student amenities levies, club and sports fees, access to computer labs to print out coursework, and so on. Each of these expenses alone is relatively small, but collectively they will significantly add up over a year.
Part-time work: how far can it get you?
International students may work up to 20 hours a week, which is a considerable amount, but only for holidays or for study weeks for the purpose of exams. Part-time work will simply not be practical for students during the main session due to the heavy teaching load, tutorials, and group assignments.
All of the above is not to discourage you from working and developing a sense of responsibility and awareness of the value of money. On the contrary, I am a firm believer in the potential benefits brought by a strong work ethic instilled in students from a young age.
However, it would be a mistake to believe that working could compensate for a considerable portion of the annual living expenses in Melbourne for a single student, especially for someone who will reside in a private rental. Therefore, parents who wish to finance their children’s education at least partially should not be overly optimistic about this option and should understand that the costs will exceed 471 AUD per week for a single student.
Building a comprehensive picture of your own
Having discussed the main components of expenses, it is now possible to build a comprehensive picture of the annual costs in Melbourne.
Scholarships, if applicable, should be separated for the calculation of net costs, as should the deferred HECS payments, which usually do not affect the current costs at the time of study: they constitute an annual fee to be paid within several years after graduation, depending on one’s income, rather than an expense.
The final range for the net cost per week will help you understand what amount of money you or your child will have to put aside every week for education in Melbourne. In my opinion, this range should be rather broad, considering the potential range of living costs and scholarships as well as your or your child’s expectations. A rough draft would look something like this: total weekly costs – scholarships – HECS payments – anticipated income = net costs. This is much better than trying to come up with a single large figure, a minimum for weekly costs, or an unrealistically low number for net costs.