Just wow at the student loan changes… eeek

[juliajo]

Students beginning university study this year upon completion of their studies will have to pay back 9% on earnings above £25,000 (aka, almost all full time wages now pay rises have been granted - national living wage is not far off that even if you decide to work in a supermarket after going to uni). It will now need to be paid over 40 years too so most of your working life, right through the expensive mortgage years and childcare years etc

I think this is catastrophic tbh and removes some of the incentive in education. I really hope schools spend time making sure cohorts fully understand the financial implications of university study, and think really carefully about what subject they choose. It’s a huge decision to make at 16/17 (when applying)

There are only so many of these roles available. I seen some pretty impressive post 16 apprenticeships but more are mediocre than great.

I'm still paying my student loan and I graduated in 2003. It's fine. It's really not a huge amount of money.

ds is in his summer break, 2nd year. He doesn't want excessive debt so is working as many hours as he can over summer to save money for uni - he is bar staff and actually enjoys it. During term time he works 20hrs a week.

They are young adult who most should have the energy for it. I worked FT and 2 part time jobs when I was 19!

Crazy isn't it? Minimum wage is close to £20k for a full time 40 hour week, and those jobs requiring qualifications pay barley more.

NMW has been rising for years at a time when graduate starting salaries have stagnated.

Unless you've the potential to move up the career ladder and earn lots in later years, it seems pointless to bother going to Uni these days.

Parapsychology - useful if you want to be a ghost buster maybe

I'm another one not repaying as I dropped to p/t hours after having dc - unlikely to ever return to work f/t or pay it back, so I won't get hammered by repayments. It will get written off in about 8 years.

It isn't. It's a tax on graduates who went to uni at a particular time and whose parents didn't buy them out of it, which is not the same thing. Basically, it's a graduate tax for the younger and poorer ones. An actual graduate tax would be much fairer.

Simple answer is don't study subjects at university which won't give you the necessary financial benefit to justify studying. If this means more science and medical degrees and fewer history ones that's hardly a disaster. I think we can cope with fewer "arts" degrees, hardly going to lead to trains being cancelled or surgery cancelled due to lack of skilled workers.

It's brilliant news if it means people study what we as a society actually need.

Agree it's a graduate tax

But that's not the same thing as saying "therefore it's money you never had so you don't notice it"

Tax is tax, you SHOULD be aware of how much you're paying and ask questions about whether it's worth it / where the money is going. Just because it never hits your bank account doesn't mean the government didn't take it from you!

(This applies to regular taxes, NI etc as well, and whether you think it's justified or not)

ive never seen anyone on mn suggest pensioners taxes be raised or that they pay extra tax for the services they use (such as nhs, pensions, etc).

claiming that young people think nothing of spraffing £100 on a night out is incredibly agist and patronising. Some false anecdote about nights out also trivializes the fact that the younger generation have their taxes raised by 9% for their entire working lives.

young people have it hard enough- good pensions are gone, housing is extortionate. An extra 9% tax throughout their lives just makes it even more impossible for them to get by.

Kids now are practicably at the stage where they can’t ever have a decent life unless they’re from a wealthy background. It’s so wrong. I can help my daughters but that doesn’t make it ok.

It does sound any worse (if anything better) than the deal on my old-style student loan, it too far too long to pay off and hung over me and most of my friends that went through at the same time, this seems better overall

OP did you/do you have a student loan and personal experience of paying one back?

The issue isn’t the threshold or the length of the term, it’s the fact that it’s a loan not a tax so people with wealthy parents don’t have this loan to pay back.

I’ve only just started making payments that are above the interest being put onto the loan, that was 10 years after graduating. My student loan is a small amount each month and you don’t miss it. It’s so small I can’t tell you what it is. Unless my salary dramatically increases, I won’t pay all the loan back. It’s not a bad salary, above U.K. average but not in the band for additional tax. DH on the other hand, is on a much better salary so he’s paying about £200 a month. The good news is that will be cleared in a couple of years, just as childcare costs decrease for us and we can start doing something sensible with that money. The bad news is that £200 is a lot of money when your nursery fees are £1,000. DH’s friend and his wife, both their parents paid their student loans. They’re on a similar salary to DH but don’t have that £200 a month going out of their wage. They also had help with a significant deposit for a house and their parents are in a position to provide free childcare. So the passing on of wealth doesn’t come in isolation.

University should either be free to everyone or everyone that attends should have a graduate tax to recoup x amount of tuition fees.

I meant *doesn’t sound worse

That's silly, sorry. She just doesn't want to go to uni...

These changes have been well publicised for ages. On our dc going to Uni threads we have discussed it many times.

What happens if the student moves abroad after graduating? How do they pay their student loan off?

ive never seen anyone on mn suggest pensioners taxes be raised or that they pay extra tax for the services they use (such as nhs, pensions, etc).
There have been lots, believe me.

claiming that young people think nothing of spraffing £100 on a night out is incredibly agist and patronising. Some false anecdote about nights out also trivializes the fact that the younger generation have their taxes raised by 9% for their entire working lives.
I didn't say 'young people' - I said graduates that i know personally., and it's not a false anecdote. I wasn't intending to trivialise, it was to put into context the '£38 per month on a £25k salary'.

ive never seen anyone on mn suggest pensioners taxes be raised or that they pay extra tax for the services they use (such as nhs, pensions, etc).

That's because no one gets to opt out of paying income tax for things they don't use. Also, not all 'pensioners' will be using the NHS any more than younger people do.

Blame Blair for the Polys and encouraging everyone and their dog to go. The country have been subsiding media studies and stage makeup degrees and now they’re punishing everyone. If universities had been kept at only the top performers doing worthwhile degrees we wouldn’t have this mess.

If other people in minimum wage jobs can’t live without help from universal credit, how do you think students can earn enough to live on and go to university and pay over £9000 in fees?

or do you just assume all students are from families who can help support them?

Also check out the interest rates on student loans at the moment 🥲

Maybe you don't enjoy arts, museums, cinemas, books, radio, TV, etc., but many people do! We need arts and humanities and they are part of our global reputation and standing. Industries and academic partnerships rely on these graduates. These jobs may rarely be as lucrative as data analysis, but they are what gets some people up in the morning.

The users of the health service skew very heavily towards the old. Pensioners are also the wealthiest generation as a whole.

why is one public service (education) to be paid for by the users yet the old enjoy free healthcare and universal pensions paid for by the younger generation.

How would that be fairer? Would that be retrospective? If so that seems massively unfair to tax people for decisions they took in the past that they may not have made if they knew they would be subject to a graduate tax.

Would you tax graduates who studied overseas? Would you tax anyone who took any additional post 18 qualifications at taxpayer expense?

It seems an utterly perverse tax if it discourages further study and reduces economic productivity as a result. It would also mean there is zero cost to studying something which is of little value to society (eg society won't pay for it) and mean there is no price/market signal not to study subjects with poor economic outcomes for society and individuals. This would mean those studying subjects like physics and biochemistry would effectively subsidise those studying subjects which don't go in to jobs valued by society.

It may also mean those who didn't go to university effectively still subsidise the cost of educating people in subjects which result in jobs which are so poorly paid that they never repay the cost of study.

Education is free up until the age of 18. It's a choice thereafter. Being unwell and needing healthcare is not a choice.