Starmer's parting shot is to give EU students a £30k discount of their uni fees.

[caringcarer]

This is a kick in the teeth to our own students. If he has money to discount off uni fees for students he should discount our own students. It's an outrage.

Why would a higher number at deficit level be better than o/s fee level? It’s running at a loss per student and that loss needs to be paid for by others who pay much more.

There is in Scotland where numbers are capped (no tuition fees). It was mentioned in one of the links up thread - there was a debate/discussion in Scotland over whether EU students paying no tuition fees were displacing disadvantaged Scottish students.

Isn't that because the Scottish Government strictly controls and caps the number of funded undergraduate places available for Scottish-domiciled applicants?

How else can they afford to fund no tuition fees other than by capping numbers? EU students were competing for the same 'free' places.

@Clavinova well it may be that Scottish universities will have to address the many financial issues that are a source of their financial issues (in the same way that UK unis will have to) so that they could make more places available (if that is even desirable - I'm not sure that it is). These include:

Frozen fees regime
Mounting cost pressures - staff pay, energy costs, pension liabilities, RAAC compliance etc
Real terms funding decline
Over reliance on international students

Op with unis struggling and our own students shafted by student loans I think it's terrible.
Apparntly there is also a 50 BILlION pounds right off for EU students who never paid back their student loans ??

Also erasmus was never great for UK students it was far better for EU students.

How is the is possible when EU students don’t get student loans?

do you mean British students who moved to Europe and didn’t pay back their loans?

Where have you got the 50 billion figure from?

@MargoLivebetter press.

Google it 50 million from 45 thousand students they can't trace or have the mechanism to claim back from .

Here if pic allows freedom of information request

I did think that rang a bell as I was typing 😆

@MaybeThisTimeILlbeLucky thank you, so £50m, rather than "50 BILLION" in your original post. I gather the total value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2026 reached £295 billion. Clearly the Government needs to get better at it's debt chasing!

Who has said that the £50m outstanding debt for EU students will be written off?

😜sorry yes 50 million !
45 thousand students is a hell of a lot of dishonest non paying students isn't it.! The figure behind that was 90 million as well.

Margo we don't have the mechanism to get it back . .we have been done over as usual

But maybe more UK students will also study in Europe if this means fewer financial barriers to do so. It might lead to more UK students studying MFL courses here if their year abroad is made easier/cheaper too…

Well it is significantly less that the remaining £245BILLION owed by our own UK graduates - who I guess must be dishonest too?

Are you telling me that our Government has no way of pursuing overseas debt through international debt collecting agencies? How do you know this?

Margo it's been over the papers ,just Google it .

The UK students can be far more easily found though can't they ?

I can't see anywhere that it says the UK Government is unable to pursue overseas student debt.

If the UK students can so easily be found, how come the total outstanding student debt stood at £295 billion at the end of March 2026, according to a House of Commons report? (Not just newspaper speculation.)

Before Brexit EU students got loans from UK Student loan company but since Brexit they have to get loan from their own country.

Is this for people not earning over the threshold?

@EasternStandard It is the overall amount of outstanding amount of student debt owed to the UK Government. Link here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01079/

Ok but I don’t think it’s because they can’t find them to get the money it’s because they have reached the threshold.

Hmmm, maybe. The Government forecasts that around 56% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2024/25 would repay their loans in full. This is more than double the forecast for the 2022/23 cohort (32%) because of reforms to student loan repayments for new students.

If you took an optimistic look at 54% of students repaying all of their loans that would still mean a write off of £159.3 BILLION. Making the £50m of international debt look like chicken feed. I'm not saying it is right to write off international debt at all and I would hope that it was being chased down, but I think we need to keep some overall perspective on where debt really sits.

It does get chased down, maybe they aren’t earning enough.

I have a UK loan (I’m British) and moved to the EU, I get sent letters every year and every year I have to provide copies of my payslips so they can make the calculation of how much I need to pay back. Then I have to pay it back. Like in the UK, if I’m earning under a certain amount I don’t have to

But writing off that percentage is a feature not a bug. It’s called the RAB charge. Before students paid fees from loans, the tax payer paid the lot. Now students pay back a decent proportion and the tax payer pays almost fuck all. Far far far less is paid to HE from central Gov coffers than it used to be.