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.

This.
Everyone benefits:

18-21 year olds get three extra years to piss about before facing the workplace.

Government gets to keep them off the unemployment figures.

Parents get to boast about their beloved DC going to university.

Universities benefit from bums on seats to pay for a massively bloated 'administocracy' - a whole army of lanyard wearers with cushy jobs (back-office jobs, not the actual lecturers at the coal face who get a crappy deal). All these keyboard-tappers didn't exist in universities half a century ago. Universities are now businesses, primarily about the money and the staff. And the more staff, the bigger the institution, the more the top-bosses feel justified in paying themselves.

The right-wing media love that it is a "loan" not a proper fair graduate tax.

The rich love that their offspring never need this debt because they pay up front.

Employers now get to employ "graduates" but still only pay them what A-level holders or even GCSE school-leavers used to earn.

It is all a big scam, and will come crashing down in a pile of rubble when demographics change and Gen Alpha see through it and choose not to go.

Uni should go back to being for only the highly-academic 2-5% of the population who want to write papers and study for the sake of it.
Most graduate-only jobs should go back to being A-Level-or-Equivalent, and train on the job.

@Tessasanderson

If its increasing, you either got the wrong degree and are not getting paid enough, or you are being stupid and not paying enough of your student loan off each month to make enough of a difference.

I take it you havn't done any research about the high interest rates being charged. Even people on officially "average" wages of £40k or so will be seeing their interest charged as higher than the repayments. Average graduate salaries are less than that. As for "being stupid", how does someone already paying tax, NIC, workplace pensions, fixed student loan, commuting costs, ridiculous high housing costs and other COL costs manage to find some spare to make extra voluntary payments against their student loans? Young workers today are being hit from every direction - low wages, high housing costs, high taxes, high COL, etc. But, yes, I just know you'll come back with the retort of mobile phone contracts, netflix and JustEat deliveries - like that's relevant when a typical young worker is paying £1k per month on rent for just a one bed flat (or even a room in a shared house) - yes, loads of money left over to over-pay student loans!! Doh!!!

What he didn't bother highlighting was the huge number who, yes, didn't pay it all off, but who DID pay off the capital AND huge amounts of interest on top (2 or 3 times the capital) and still didn't manage to pay it off within the time period

I can't find it now but the numbers were on the website. It was clear that anyone who was going to be an above average but not very high earner was going to pay back a lot more than they borrowed. There were several tables of predictions based on salary and career path.

What he, and no-one else could take account of was the significant increase in inflation and the government failing to uprate the payment threshold accordingly. That's the issue.

Plus you've got to remember that he's talking to the general population, not the disproportionately wealthy subset on MN who have tens of thousands of pounds to give their DC for university costs as well as house deposits.

In any case, here's what MSE are currently saying about plan 2 loans

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/repay-post-2012-student-loan/#interestfree

You are so right, l am wrong. I meant to say "Martin Lewis ISN'T always 100% right...l stand corrected...what a dope!!! Need to check before l press post...

Just more hate directed at "young people" by the usual suspects. If the equivalent threads were started about old people being entitled grifters, they'd be taken down. I would hate myself if I had my head so far up my arse that I believed all of this bile being posted. Step away from GB news. It's adding to your delusion.

But how much did you borrow all together??

Cus paying back only £1200 a year for 30 years is only 36k and then it gets written off - so that does seem a cheap way to borrow money to me!!

I actually agree there. The parents were just as culpable. There isnt a chance in hell my children were signing up for something like that without us scrutinizing it properly.

A 17 year old doesnt need to be financially savvy to deal with this. But they should have the brains to be able to ask someone to check and explain things to them.

Absolutely - Martin Lewis is a snake oil salesman and propaganda merchant. Why did people ever think he was some kind of benevolent independent advisor for individual students?

@StandingDeskDisco

It is all a big scam, and will come crashing down in a pile of rubble when demographics change and Gen Alpha see through it and choose not to go.
Uni should go back to being for only the highly-academic 2-5% of the population who want to write papers and study for the sake of it. Most graduate-only jobs should go back to being A-Level-or-Equivalent, and train on the job.

I fully agree. Politicians and society in general have screwed over the younger generation(s). Yet they still try to blame the younger generation(s) for it. It's quite frankly laughable. There is going to be BIG problems in the near future as the younger generation are getting more and more fed up with being screwed over.

My son went to Uni, not because he wanted the "uni experience" it was because it was the only route for him to get the kind of profession he wanted. One of many similar professions that used to have non Uni roads into it, i.e., as you quite rightly say, just the right A levels/grades, but which is now degree only. My Godfather was the same profession, he went in at the bottom with A levels and worked his way up to Board level in a national firm - that's not possible in that profession today. He got a pretty "local" job as there was a head office of a national firm within a 20 minute drive. Where we live, there is no such firm within commuting distance at all, hence DS has had to relocate to a big city, and having to pay eye watering rent, thanks to centralisation of everything into London. Yet another way that society has screwed the young.

People blame students for wanting to "waste 3 years drinking" at Uni, but an awful lot are only there because there isn't an alternative route into their chosen profession. It's NOT the student's fault that the employment World has changed that way. It's NOT the student's fault that so many employers lazily impose a degree as being a minimum entry requirement for jobs that don't require a degree - it's just used as a lazy way to weed out large numbers of applicants.

My son has the maximum because I don’t have the money. The poorer the student, the bigger the loan. 🫩

Unfortunately, Uni's were pushing them and doing a "Martin Lewis" to make them sound appealing, risk free, a good deal, etc etc. I sat through several "student finance" presentations with our DS when doing university open days, and they were definitely bordering on mis-representation, using the same kind of "smoke and mirrors" used by Martin Lewis and giving no warnings at all about how the interest mounts up and how you can very easily end up paying 2/3/4 times the original amount borrowed if you're earning at the higher end of average earnings. Students were mis-sold a lie. Nothing more, nothing less.

As for how students should have "asked someone", well, they were being told by Martin Lewis and Universities what a good deal the loans were, so they were getting "professional" advice in a way, weren't they? Why would they think they were being screwed over when they were being told by respected/professional people what a good deal it was??

Wow. That is word for word absolutely spot on. Well said.

Haha,

You make the point in your first paragraph....average graduate salaries are less than £40k which is deemed the national average. So all these graduates that have gone to uni to study are earning less than joe bloggs who just went and got a job.

Are you not seeing that for the MAJORITY, uni was a waste of time and was just for kudos and life experience. Not to earn more.

You're both so clever. I love how you have decided we don't need any more nurses, paramedics, dieticians, radiographers, physiotherapists etc. Genius.

I understand, OP.
YANBU.

This answer is laughable.

On average (from ONS) in the UK people with a degree earn ~27% more annually than those without. The gap on earnings for women is larger - a woman with a degree can expect to earn about £250,000 more than a non-graduate over their working life.

So you saying that it's not worth going to university is patently untrue.

Oh bugger off, rage bait. GRANTS didn't cost the country much more than loans. And loans can ruin people due to the ridiculous interest.

Of course we need them. Don't be daft.

They just shouldn't need degrees before they start on-the-job training.
Where are the A-Level-or-Equivalent routes into these roles?

You surely can't be that stupid?

I have a specialist professional qualification which requires the holder to start with an honours degree in one of a specific range of subjects. Until the 70s it was possible for a school leaver to learn on the job and catch up with the graduates by sitting additional foundation exams. I know scientists who started work as school leavers in the 60s and 70s, whose employers enabled them to study on day release for an hnd/degree - or even an ond, if they only had o levels.

The burden of training has been taken away from employers and now rest entirely on would-be employees. Which is a development to be expected in a lightly regulated free market system in which the terms of engagement are set primarily by the holders of capital rather than the providers of labour.

Pretty sure most of those professions are on over £40k.

Member of my family is a nurse with a degree. Was telling me how she was earning over £100 per hour covering a bank holiday shift. I dont think she should begrudge any interest payments on any student loans when you see her big house, car, fancy holidays etc etc.

She got a degree, worked hard, climbed the ladder and earns very good money

Misleading statistic.
The population of "those who didn't go to university" includes all those who were never going to go, being non-academic or unintelligent.

The real comparison needs to be between those who went to uni, and those who could have gone (having the intelligence and academic aptitude) but chose not to go. How much do this latter group earn over their lifetime?

Interest rates aside, student loans in the UK are a good deal.

What other type of loan can you defer paying on until you earn a certain amount? What other type of loan does not appear on your credit report? What other type of loan gets written off if you don't pay it off in full?

The system is broken and should be replaced with a graduate tax, but student loads remain a necessary evil for many and it's clear that they are still badly misunderstood.

How many university finance presentations have you sat through at Uni Open Days??

If you didn't, you can't talk about blaming students.

They WERE Mis-Sold, Unis were encouraging them to take out maximum loans, playing down the risks/interest etc (just the same way that Martin Lewis did), giving the impression that huge numbers didn't pay off the loans and so it didn't matter - completely failing to highlight the potentially huge repayments that even slightly over average earners would be paying and still not paying it off. The presentations showed x% (a high figure) who weren't paying it off, but didn't make it clear that a huge proportion would have paid off the capital, and a shed load of interest, and still not paid it off by the end of the term, but only because the interest was so high, compounded for decades!)

No highlighting of the risks of interest rates rising, earnings thresholds not keeping up with inflation, etc.

There were NONE of the usual official warnings that are obligatory in other regulated "financial services" areas, such as loans, mortgages, hire purchase, insurance, etc., because the student loans aren't regulated in the same way as other financial products under the Financial Services Acts.

In ANY other loan/insurance situation, the victims would get compensation if they hadn't been formally warned about the risks, if there hadn't been a full and complete fact-check "Know your client" review of the borrower, etc. NONE of that happened with student loans.

Look at the army of "oldies" who got compensation for the alleged mis-selling of endowment policies. Apparently it was OK for the oldies to go into endowments without doing their own due diligence etc., and hence they got huge compensation payments, but those same oldies think it's fine that immature youngsters just heading to Uni didn't do their own due diligence? Same with all the other mis-selling scandals where oldies have benefitted, whether pension mis-selling, car finance, etc. Just another area where the oldies have pulled the drawbridge up behind them and screwed over the younger generations.