To not feel very sorry for some student loan whiners

[Viviennemary]

There's been a lot of complaining about student loans and its wrong they seemed to have move the goalposts re paying back. StillI I read about this woman complaining her student loan is £120k and is going up every year. She was a student for 10 years fgs. Just as well the tax payer wasn't funding her. I hope these folk arent just going to be let away with not paying.

University accomodation is a swizz.

Look at flats for the elderly. They are basically unsellable at the moment, with the result that 1 or 2 bed flats for the elderly have market values far lower than anything young people can access, despite construction costs (materials and labour) rising.

Why can that property exist (its plentiful in some areas) but students can't be housed at similarly suppressed costs?

The government need to stop making the young foot the bill for the elderly. They are not recognising the catastrophic cost this has to the economy due to the choices it forces young people to make:

• University/higher education is too expensive = young people stop choosing it. The workforce education level falls, the university sector is hit hard.
• wages too low/childcare too expensive = young people stop choosing to have as many children. Population replacement stalls and we lack the people to pay in to fund what the elderly cost in pensions, care and nhs.
• housing values too high relative to wages = young peoples money is too tied up on mortgage interest, they demand ever higher wages, pushing up inflation and making the UK less competitive internationally, plus they have no money left to spend on goods and services.

Agree with this. Dd took a last minute gap year 2019/20 which turned out to dodge the worst of Pandemic disruption but her year in 2020/21 was a mix of remote lectures and classes(even for those living in halls), lack of normal student social experience, many students not returning post Christmas and disruption to every day life during lockdowns and beyond. To add insult to injury those who started in 2019 (4 year courses)and 2020(3 year courses) had their final results delayed due to strikes.

It's yet another way the UK government screws their young people over (young being millenials and below). My DH has a student loan that he will never pay off, he graduated at the top of the 2008 crisis so there were no jobs available, meanwhile the debt increased by loads because of the insane interest rates.

I had a Dutch student loan, paid off completely. Because I graduated during bad financial times I paid 0% interest. Interest for students graduating now is 2.33%.

The UK is quickly turning into a gerontocracy where young people get squeezed at every turn.

There are a few obvious things that could be done here.

Firstly, reviewing the thresholds at which payment begins.

Secondly, looking at restructuring debit of those who have a lot of outstanding still after many years.

While I generally agree with the premise that people should understand what they're signing up to and take the consequences - this definitely feels like it was mis-sold and goalposts moved.

My loans were plan A and I repaid pretty easily within about 8 years of graduate earning. This is reasonable. What some plan B students are dealing with is not.

In the future, I think students should be thinking more carefully about the degrees they are taking, the debt they're accumulating and whether that's worth it.

Young people are just that, young, and governments have a responsibility to create public policies around education and training that are easily legible to the young and inexperienced (as so many first in the family to HE are). The student loan and university expansion policy was undertaken on the flimsiest of hypotheses about how graduate jobs were going to increase.

I honestly think people should stop responding to this thread. The OP seems to relish in posting goady and inflammatory posts, then swans off without updating. As has happened here.

Totally agree

Yes that’s a v unfair change

I don't know. I was lucky and only had to borrow £3k per year for my tuition, but I owe so much more now then I did when I graduated and I've been paying every month. It just feels stupid. Unless I win the lottery or something, they will never get that full debt from me and in the meantime I'm paying a couple of hundred pounds a month into a black hole of debt that only grows.
It seems such a hopeless system!

Neither am I. I put two DD through Uni, we paid their accommodation fees, bought food every time we drooped them off and from what I can gather from DD1 I paid a bit towards those sharing her house as well😂

Goodness knows how much either of them owe on their student loan.

I am working class and came out with no debts. I paid my own way through uni. I worked and paid off my student fees as I studied. It is possible but sadly most do not have the common sense to do this.

Who is benefitting from the interest being paid btw?

That really is a lot of waffle to say nothing. The two groups are average earnings of people who have a degree, and average earnings of those who don't.

The stats are what they are. In the uk, if you go to university you earn more. Therefore, to say it's pointless going to university is wrong.

Why that is doesn't have any impact on that statement.

@Fetaface I’m interested to hear about what part time job allowed earn to pay £9k a year plus accommodation at £7,200 a year plus food, transport etc… I’d conservatively say absolutely scraping by £20k minimum a year. All whilst working part time around your full time degree?

I didn't work part time. I worked full time. I did a full time degree and worked full time.

Student loans should be similar to other loans with two exceptions:

• govt backed
• no interest accrued / no repayment needed until end of studies

Maybe also a reduced interest rates for a small lists of degrees (nursing for ex) but only as long as they work exclusively for the public sector.

The whole concept of only having to pay when you earn above a certain salary and the notion that the debt is cancelled after some time is not viable. Of course interests are very high: this is to balance the fact that many won’t repay their debt.

I agree with every word of that. I've posted on MN before about the surplus over 55s housing that dosn't sell/rent even at very low prices and likewise wondered how the developers make a profit on it - they must do or they wouldn't build, so they're clearly making excess profits on student accommodation, indirectly paid for by taxpayers and students via student loans that inflate student accommodation prices.

The problem with student loans IMO is that it’s so normal and ‘the done thing, don’t worry about it’ when you’re really quite young. I went to university because that’s what my friends were doing, our college was promoting and off I went. Only nobody really went in to the detail of what the loan situation looked like and as a 17-18 year old I had absolutely no idea what that was going to look like when I’m older. I didn’t graduate, the course really wasn’t for me and I got a job which then turned in to a career. I’m doing well financially but I am still paying off this loan I have no benefit from and who knows how long I’ll be paying it off for. I appreciate that this was my choice, and some will say at 19 I was an adult when I made the choice to drop out, but I can tell you hand on my heart I did not start understanding financial responsibility until I was in my late 20s.

That really is a lot of waffle to say nothing.
Just because you can't understand it, doesn't mean it is waffle.

The two groups are average earnings of people who have a degree, and average earnings of those who don't.
That is the flaw with that statistic. You really don't understand statistics or the scientific method.

To say it's pointless going to university is wrong.
I never said that. I said (in not so many words) that society should be reformed so that most people don't need to go to university to follow higher paid careers. They should be able to enter any career at 18.

University is now a part of the capitalist system that sucks wealth ever upwards, but until the system is reformed, some will benefit from going, IF they are entering a high-paid profession, in an area that is not shrinking, with a clear career path, for which there is not already a surplus of qualified people.

Considering students are legally only allowed to work 20 hours when studying how is that possible?

When was this and what was your degree/job, out of interest?

It's not a graduate tax. It's a social mobility tax and it's fucking disgraceful.

How did that work? Did you go to any lectures?

There is no legal limit at all! That is ridiculous! You can work however many hours you wish to.

I went to every lecture. I worked outside of lecture hours. Not all full time jobs are 9-5 and not all lecture hours are within 9-5.