Student loan repayments are completely unfair

@Sammy900 So how do you think our vast number of universities should get money? If grads won’t pay (and it’s obviously a tax based on salary!) then who does? Do we want 37% of young people to go? Should we cull universities and places? Jobs ask for degrees because they can. It’s often not a need. For decades there was no need but we increased university provision and invented the need. Now we cannot afford it and grads don’t want to pay but they do earn more! It’s a good thing to evaluate if a degree is necessary but jobs are so difficult for every young person now we need a reset on employing young people, not the bank balances of better off grads!

Im
45 and am
paying 186 a month back. As a single parent it’s killing me. 3 years left until it’s clear!

The interest rates are usurious

Going to university is expected by so many people (actually MN is a prime example) that this is what happens. A lot of people rack up debt (which in itself is fine as after a certain level, people should be responsible) but dont stop to think whether going to uni is a good idea.

Completely agree. There's a petition on the mn petitions site, worth signing and sharing

When they first came out in the early 90s they weren’t too bad - but also we didn’t have to pay tuition then, it was just for living expenses. Also we didn’t borrow as much as most people lived in shitty house shares that were cheap.

i paid my loan off within a few years of graduating, even though my first graduate job only paid £11k per year.

Now though the amount people have to borrow combined with interest is ridiculous. Mind you I also find the trend of students living in really expensive purpose built accommodation ridiculous.

Fully agree with you @Sammy900

Yes, we recently had a trainee from the Buckingham one and it seemed good.

It should be possible to train for shortage public sector occupations without (excessive) debt. Otherwise it's just one part of the state creating problems for the other.

I was at uni in 2000 for three years and worked a short time so I have never paid it back. That was 20 years ago. I am sure it will get written off eventually.

They are starting to introduce teaching degree apprenticeships and I suspect this will become the main route to QTS. No tuition fees.

We need people to study medicine, engineering, computer science, maths, chemistry, pharmacology, nursing, teaching etc.

University is an expensive route, we don't need as many people studying lower value courses at weaker institutions. My neighbours daughter got mediocre A-level grades (teacher assesed during covid) snd scraped into a low ranked University in clearing. She has struggled to get a graduate job because in reality she was never that academic - she didn't get the grades required to stay on in school at sixth form & did a-levels at college. I feel gutted for her that she was sold a dream to an extent, and is now stuck with a vast debt she can't pay.

I think it is opening people's eyes to the costs of uni. A lot of the people currently being encouraged to go to uni (by parents, teachers, social media) are not destined for high paid careers that justify it as an investment. These young people basically should not really be going, and definitely should not be going where they can't live at home while studying. The investment will not pay off & they will be paying for it for life.

We need people to go to university and hopefully get a job to contribute to society, so they should be free of charge. Or at least you shouldn’t spend the rest of your working life paying it back.

Where I live universities thankfully are free of charge. You actually recieve around £700 a month to attend.

My friend only has one child, and they stash all their child benefit and save other money aswell for their daughter, she is now 14. They’ve told her that if she goes to one of their local uni’s (they live near tonnes of choice!) and lives at home they’ll pay it for her and so she’ll have no debt. They’re in the process of using this money for a rental property and then they’ll use the rental income to pay a mortgage and the excess for their daughter and then she’ll also have a foot on the property ladder.
We have 3 kids and no way could we do that but it’s great if you can.

I think you've misunderstood what happens if you can't pay a commercial loan, though. Unlike a student loan, where you just pay nothing under threshold, they don't just sit around for 7 years to see if you'll start paying again or not. And if you think the interest going up in a period where you don't earn enough to pay a student loan is bad, you really wouldn't like the way that penalties and interest start to mount up for many kinds of loans if you fall behind the payment schedule.

This is why I also feel torn about the argument that it discriminates against women. Yes, two mat leaves definitely extended my own student loan. On the other hand, it was pretty great that, unlike other debts like the mortgage, I had absolutely no obligation to make a student loan payment when I was on maternity pay. In that regard I think it's much more friendly to women, and to anyone taking a less conventional path, than most kinds of debt. In the US student debt is more like all other debts - they still want paying even if you're unemployed - and I wouldn't want to swap to that at all.

But they’re not just written off, they may not be financially responsible for that specific debt anymore but the financial ramifications of having debt that isn’t cleared are huge, it can literally impact employment. You know yourself you’d much rather have a student loan sitting there accruing interest than you would having a black mark against your name for unresolved debt. Student loans are specially designed so you don’t have that kind of black mark.

But I would just like to take the opportunity to apologise for my tone, I did get unnecessarily condescending towards you.

I also don’t think student loans are perfect, I would welcome a wholesale review of higher education and how it is funded, and if that was what the petition said I’d have signed it, just scrapping interest is rudimentary and doesn’t get to the core of the issue. And would likely cause a lot more.

I think students need to look closer to home for uni therefore negating the need for such large loans. I realise this isnt for everyone but most people have a uni they could commute to.
They dont have my specific course viscerally just code for I want to move out and party.

@H202too but again that’s not a feasible comparison. You can technically make your student loan disappear if you work cash in hand forever or disappear abroad without setting up the payments. Nobody takes out a bank loan with the view “it gets written off after 7 years”, firstly, because it very much doesn’t, second of all because for you to get to the point of it ‘disappearing’ a very certain set of circumstances have to occur for the limitations to apply. And lastly, as you state, there are severe financial repercussions that occur. It’s just such a moot point it does nothing to add to a discussion about student loans.