Student loans- feel sick

I would argue a lot of jobs require a degree (or at least they did when I graduated in 2015 - my industry has only recently stopped asking for them) only to pay an average salary. My industry starting salary was £18k when I graduated but needed a degree to it. It’s now a starting salary of £28k and an industry average salary of £35k. I am thankfully a high earner (over £60k) as I am in sales within the industry and earn a bonus, but most don’t. This has been the issue for the last 20 years at least, but salaries haven’t kept up. My industry has put starting salaries up but not middle salaries.

As @Juniperberry55 and @ShesTheAlbatross have since pointed out to me, the repayment "due" is based on when you leave uni, not when the first payment is "due" based on when your earnings are high enough to warrant repayments starting. I will readily admit that this was my firm misunderstanding, based on how the information on the official websites has been worded.

I was and am money savvy but worked 25-30 hours a week whilst I studied just to get by, even with the loans! I received mostly grants as they were still a thing then due to low income/family having no money but still borrowed about £40k, £27,500 in tuition and £12,500 in maintenance loans. Nothing else I could have done really to not graduate with debt - the worst is that the interest starts the day you start uni, not after you start paying it back. It should be all interest free imo, but at LEAST the years at uni should be if nothing else.

Did you live at home? That wasn’t an option for me, I had to move out at 16 so paid my way through college when doing my A Levels too, and then 3 jobs whilst at uni.

"Plan 2 loans are written off 30 years after the April you were first due to repay."

Direct quote from:

www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/when-your-student-loan-gets-written-off-or-cancelled

Technically yes, tax payers will pay the balance of a written off student loan. But in reality lots of people pay more than the beginning balance on the loan but interest is crazy. I'm paying over £1200 a year, but more than £900 in interest is charged. I have £13k loan which started as a £11k loan. In another 19 years I may be down to £9k and that would be written off but I would have paid multiple times what I borrowed in reality

People are generally trying to get a career from going to university, there will always be the ones who go do a course that has little value, spend a few years boozing it up and hope to get a minimum wage job at the end of it. I think they're in the minority but those who get through uni with a good degree, may never pay off their loans due to the high level of interest charged

So when it’s written off, who is meeting the bill? The tax payer? I’m not sure what the answer is to my question, particularly when people are talking about other companies buying the loan off the government.

No, it is a loan with interest getting added to it. This whole idea that it is just a ‘tax’ is an illusion set up by the powers that be. It’s a debt that is considered when it comes to affordability re mortgages.

But why are people taking degrees - time and money - with no intention of securing a career meaning they don’t even start to pay it back? What was the point of getting that certificate/s?

I do really worry about the choices some younger people make. A friend who is on a low income working in childcare has a daughter who insisted on going off to university despite mediocre grades. She's taken a poorly rated business course a low ranked university and racked up a massive amount of student debt, and the only jobs she's had since university are low paid retail/service type jobs. She's going to have that debt hanging round her neck for most of her working life.

Plan 1 is different to plan 2, presumably if you finished uni in 2008, you started your course pre 2006 so yours will be written off at age 65
www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-repay/

Do you value education for its own sake, or would you dissuade DC from taking courses which are unlikely to lead to well paid secure professions?

Something a bit in the middle. I would discourage them from taking courses which i think simply aren't high value. There are some poor value courses at low ranked institutions where a sizeable chunk of those graduating end up underemployed in jobs not requiring a degree. But that doesn't mean I would expect them only to take a degree that leads very obviously to a specific, highly paid job (such as law or medicine). I do think degrees are a very expensive way for many of the people who take them to acquire the skills needed for the professions they go into. We need more good quality apprenticeships and tradespeople and I'd encourage my kids into these areas too over a weaker arts degree leading to an unrelated job in retail or hospitality.

Lol mine was £45k when I left and despite paying it for 8 years it’s now £67k. And I’m considering doing another degree to add to it (healthcare).

It’s a tax at this point, I don’t think I’ll ever pay it off so don’t let it stress you out.

Yeah that’s the same as plan one which I’m on, but I think it’s 25 years after you start paying? Please tell me it’s less. Ideally 10 🤣

I feel your pain OP. My repayments are £750 per month and it’s just horrible seeing that balance not really change due to interest. Appreciate I’m in a fortunate position but paying this on top of London rent is just soul destroying! Wish I could put that towards savings instead :(

I was in a similar position. In fact, you needed 3 months of payslips to defer. So whilst I was on SMP (at about £100 per week) I was still having to pay £125 per month to the student loan company.

Sorry, can't make the link work, but you can probably cut and paste the relevant bit.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/20250728111429/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/more-than-630000-graduates-on-benefits" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.md/20250728111429/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/more-than-630000-graduates-on-benefits/

Interesting, but doesn't necessarily tell the full story because a working single parent could be eligible for UC even with a decent income. Appears that people are starting to cotton on that for many people, higher education was a bit of a scam.

I’ve never struggled to repay mine - I didn’t even lay anything at all for many years when I was working part time. The deductions only started again once I went back to full time and then I was earning enough to afford it anyway.

It is just an extra tax but for some it has an end in sight and others will never repay the full amount (all student loans are cleared after a certain cut off point).

I did my undergrad in Australia which has a system (HELP loans) which is on paper broadly similar to the one here - if you never earn over the threshold, you don't pay, etc.

In practice though, people still see them as loans and not a tax. The specific implementation of how the interest and repayment bands etc work means that the average person fully pays off their loan in less than 10 years. It results in different emergent dynamics, let's say.

My masters was done as an international student with a regular loan - I will say, it really sharpened the mind, having to do ROI calculations on the degree for myself...

Fully agree. An actual graduate tax would also be paid by all graduates, with no exemption for those old enough to have gone for free.

What we have now is not a graduate tax. And it's less fair.

While not entirely incorrect, this view misses some crucial details.
In poor or isolated areas, kids often have to work to help their families, making further schooling unnecessary after they’ve learned basic academic skills. This explains why Brazil doesn’t rely on foreign workers to fill jobs, unlike the UK, where roles needing vocational training or manual labor are undervalued and seen as failures. In Brazil, some jobs don’t require full secondary education, which contrasts with our system and is often a source of debate.

Children of rich parents often have no loan at all as BOMAD pays for it upfront.

Agree it's de-levelling society when the original aim of making uni accessible to 'normal' people was to level it.

Who exactly is 'they'?

OP, stop worrying about it. You'll keep making low payments and it will get wiped out after the loan expires. Zero point worrying when you're not actually responsible for full repayment.

Do you value education for its own sake, or would you dissuade DC from taking courses which are unlikely to lead to well paid secure professions?