Student loan worries

[SadBut]

Hi DD is looking to go to university. One unconditional offer
Three offers below her expected grades
REALLY worried about her loans
Can the conditions of the loans be changed by the government AFTERWARDS?
I've seen where the terms of the loan have been changed from Some one paying £20-£30 a month going to £89 per month!!!
Can they do this?

But you wouldn't be paying it out of your pension if your pension was less than £23,000. Are you planning to work into your 80s?

@MarchingFrogs
Dont be so ridiculous. You know what I mean. Derby is Rolls Royce! Of course they don’t look anywhere else for their apprentices. However if you plan to study anything not related to Rolls Royce you should choose Durham over Derby. In addition Rolls Royce have grads from many universities. Why would they not look at a Cambridge engineering grad for example? Or an Imperial grad? If any company wishes to maintain its world position they need a variety of grads. So my point stands. Choose the best if you can.

By the way - are their accountants, legal team, marketing team, buying team, finance team, design team, engineering team, etc all Derby grads? Obviously not.

And they can be blasé about it. Because they understand how it works.

I paid £60 a month from my first job. Then I was unemployed for a while, and I paid nothing, as their was no wage to take it from. Then I got a good job, and they took £300 a month off me until it was all paid off.

Its easier to think of it as a graduate tax. They take it directly from your wages before you even get them, and if your wage goes up the amount you pay back goes up (but the percentage stays the same). Your DD will never “struggle to pay it back” because they will take it from her wages automatically.

I left Uni with £20k of debt and honestly it just gets gradually smaller as years go on until it’s paid off. I didn’t even think about it, because it wasn’t a problem. If you earn a small wage they won’t even take payments!

I also came from a very poor background. My parents couldn’t help me at all. The best thing I ever did to lift myself out of poverty was get my degree. Don’t frighten your daughter out of this opportunity.

@mimbleandlittlemy No, but if my pensions were 25K plus I'd still need to pay it back. And I'll probably have to work 65+. If I can.

Depends when you take out the loan. I think they will now be written off for over 60s? If people live to 85, working to 65 isn’t unreasonable.

The new ones won't he written off at 60.

Anyway, I'm really hoping OP's lack of understanding didn't ruin her daughter's chances of going to university.

Less than £200k. Its 9% of gross

@SeasonFinale nothing on first £27,000.

I worked it out as about £163,000. Nice if you can get it, and can probably pay back the whole loan in less than a year.

@mumsneedwine
Most people earning this don’t start on this salary! But yes, pay it off asap. We don’t know how old Dc is. Could be 35! Having said that, plenty earn that in the city before 30. None start on it though.

Different world to most people 😂. 95% of the population will never earn 25% of that a year.

Also the current loans were 30 years. For most the loan lasted until 51/52. If you were a mature student, that’s different of course. The new repayment period is 40 years. So still not retirement age for most not in the public sector.

As someone who works abroad I can testify that it doesn't just stop! However they do work out a new rate for you in line with your likely take home pay (they take the taxes of your country of residence into consideration as well as your salary).

E.g. I live in the Middle East in a country that does not have income tax earning around 58k and I pay £189 per month. When I was between jobs that repayment stopped. Whenever my salary changes I'm meant to tell SLC about my updated circumstances so they can work out a new rate for me. So the only difference is that there's more onus on me to update SLC whereas in the UK its done automatically via payroll.

I think the payments are very manageable. The only bit that irks me is the interest rate is very high - without the interest I would've paid off the loan before the cutoff date but with the interest it seems I'll never pay off the loan in its entirety. But it's still a better situation than not having the degree.

Overall, my degrees (I also did a postgrad) helped me in the job market - there's plenty of jobs that auto reject people without university degrees as they use auto-CV reader software which filter candidates based on key words.

OP please listen to the advice on this thread. If your daughter wants to go to university there is no reason for her not to.

On a side note, I agree with Xenia that it sounds like she picked universities that are below her potential - I'd investigate whether she can go to better unis through clearing if she gets good grades on results day.