Thoughts on the Student Loans Scandal?

[HK04]

Own 2pence worth: Feel really bad for young graduates, especially post 2012 in England.

There are only a few ways to be truly socially mobile: luck (likes of lottery, when/where born etc), advantageous marriage, inheritance (again accident of birth not own merit)… and education/hard work (one of few ways own merit a factor yet even that is getting much harder!)…

To have to pay £27k tuition plus maintenance loans and despite paying £250 a month or more, (9% loss of salary) for 30 years still likely never repaying it is immoral. Martin Lewis is right. Imagine if that same sum was going into a pension?

Reeves always trots out the fairness argument…why should tax payers pay for someone else’s education and graduates earn on average more over a lifetime etc…

Here’s the thing: it’s nowhere near as simple as that.

The richest can avoid taking loans altogether thus increasing inequality.

The brightest poorest kids can be the worst off. Not only did they have no hand up or head start they are forced to take on a mountain of debt that can’t ever be paid back.

If someone didn’t train where would our teachers, doctors and nurses (and many others) come from!?

Reeves also tries the shady politician’s deflection of linking to our love of the NHS ala ah but we brought down waiting lists… eh? Not only is that unconnected (or were students meant to pay for the NHS? Thought it was tuition fee etc), but the irony is the NHS now full of young Drs and Nurses saddled with the plan 2 loan shark rates…

Plus what is fair about playing Monopoly if the board is already owned?

Not to mention there are many who never pay tax for whatever reason but if graduates pay more tax over their working lives surely that’s also their contribution back to society?

For Reeves to freeze the repayment threshold meaning even more low earning students are crippled through fiscal drag is imho indefensible.

Not only do young people face on balance chance of not being able to buy a home, cost of living crisis, likely no pension… they are saddled with this debt… they can’t even - no matter how dire their financial situation ever declare bankruptcy if need arises to clear the balance.

Reality is as an example we could have two nurses working side by side, one lucky enough to have been bank rolled by Mum/Dad and over 30 years having an extra 90k to enjoy whilst the other had no option but to take out loans who loses that and more, just due to accident of birth compounding the initial inequality even more. Whatever happened to equality of opportunity!?

Who are the student loans company anyways?? Anyone know!?

YABU What’s the problem? Keep the system as it is…

YANBU We need an affordable, fairer deal, for all our young people, system needs urgent reform

The whole thing has been a disaster for students and universities.

The original thinking behind tuition fees was that universities would compete on fees (up to the cap) just as ordinary businesses compete on cost. In fact, they cannot do so because the cap is set at too low a level- every university has to charge the maximum (and that's leaving aside the numerous ways in which universities don't act like ordinary businesses, such as the fact that students not only select but are selected). The Dept of Education has effectively accepted that this is not a market in which economic competition occurs and yet unis are still subject to competition law as if it does, which makes it harder for them to cooperate in ways which might make them more efficient. And the government can't increase tuition fees to a level that would be workable for universities without harming students.

Meanwhile, students are given hugely mixed messages about the pros and cons of taking a very complex loan, at an age when we barely deem them old enough for a credit card.

Honestly, they should scrap the whole thing and return to state funded university education funded through general taxation.