Student Loans

[Eric Cartman]

This seems to be a hill Labour are trying to die on, on a weekly basis right now.

I am a Plan 1 graduate and ate, lived and partied my maintenance loan away, no better feeling in life than being on a night out with your mates when your loan dropped. I still owe a fair bit of it after somewhat bombing my final year and dossing around in very low paid jobs for 7 or 8 years, I see the payment I make as a reminder of how much of a plonker I was and I am more than happy to pay it.

It was right after me the system morphed into this worst of both worlds two pronged con job, telling kids they must go to uni (not just the government, the education system and private industry) whilst sharply increasing fees. Add in the frozen thresholds on repayment and absurd essentially hidden interest terms and it almost looks like a sick lesson imposed on children, designed to show them that life is massively unfair.

The thing that really rubs me up the wrong way is the glee at which they defend the system whilst inadvertently being massive hypocrites. I saw a quote from Jacqui Smith saying 'It's right that those who benefit from a university degree should pay for it', show me the money then Jacqui, you graduated and did a post-grad, you benefited, you pay, right?

The thresholds themselves are almost hilarious at this point, a smidge above min wage means you benefited from your degree enough to be considered a high earner.

Complete shitshow all around. I would much rather Labour just say it as it is, it's massively unfair and they are lumbered with it alongside an economic situation which means they can't do anything drastic about it. The one relatively cheap lever they have is to funnel the smartest, hardest working kids towards courses that will give them the skills we need in the future as a country using the fee system and they don't seem to even want to do that.

[goats]

Re: Student Loans

Didn’t they write a load off recently? Or did I dream that up? Coming out of uni with 50-70k worth of debt into the current job and housing market must be hard. The new going to uni bollocks should be an apprenticeship becoming a plumber/sparky/chippy etc….thats where the money is

[JamesWales]

Re: Student Loans

It's bloody awful and the whole set up of universities feels very unsustainable at the moment really. I don't think that's per se an awful thing. Maybe some universities revert back to polytechnics primarily serving their local communities and training people in more practical skills?

I had a student loan and I think I left uni with £12k of debt which was a pain in the arse but I don't recall it increasing and the interest was minimal. Indeed there were always rumours in uni that some of the posher kids took the loans and invested it and lived off mummy and daddy as it's the best interest rate on a loan you would ever get.

And that's part of the problem. Like many things it feels loaded against working class people who pay through the nose for something the wealthy can avoid. I don't think I wholly object to some form of loan. It is an investment in someone's career, but the whole sector needs a shake up and the loan system feels totally unsustainable. Reform proposed two year degrees which I think is interesting as it may strike a balance between the uni experience and less debt.

I really think something will have to give soon.

[Eric Cartman]

Re: Student Loans

Didn’t they write a load off recently? Or did I dream that up? Coming out of uni with 50-70k worth of debt into the current job and housing market must be hard. The new going to uni bollocks should be an apprenticeship becoming a plumber/sparky/chippy etc….thats where the money is

They sell the shittest ones I think, there was a bit of a scandal a few years back about student loans that had been sold off being chased like a normal debt/people being pressured into paying.

The issue is you come out with 70k into a job market/economy that doesn't pay you much for a good few years and buy then your debt has gone way up because of the nonsense interest rate.

The whole thing is not really suiting anyone (tax payer or student) - the big sell to students is 'don't worry, your earning potential is so shit you probably won't pay back much of it anyway' :facepalm: but as the thresholds are frozen and min wage rises, min wage will become the floor.

[Eric Cartman]

Re: Student Loans

It's bloody awful and the whole set up of universities feels very unsustainable at the moment really. I don't think that's per se an awful thing. Maybe some universities revert back to polytechnics primarily serving their local communities and training people in more practical skills?

I had a student loan and I think I left uni with £12k of debt which was a pain in the arse but I don't recall it increasing and the interest was minimal. Indeed there were always rumours in uni that some of the posher kids took the loans and invested it and lived off mummy and daddy as it's the best interest rate on a loan you would ever get.

And that's part of the problem. Like many things it feels loaded against working class people who pay through the nose for something the wealthy can avoid. I don't think I wholly object to some form of loan. It is an investment in someone's career, but the whole sector needs a shake up and the loan system feels totally unsustainable. Reform proposed two year degrees which I think is interesting as it may strike a balance between the uni experience and less debt.

I really think something will have to give soon.

Yeah I know someone who did that - invested their loan - during covid the interest rate on plan 2 had to be capped because the calculation (RPI + 3%) took it to something like 15% at one point. But for those graduating then, even a capped interest rate was increasing their principle by so much per year (even if they were working and paying a small piece off).

2 year degree sounds fine in some subjects but not others, feels a bit like shrinkflation though, make the product shitter, keep it the same price then after a few years its now smaller and costs as much as the big version did.

The people who actually benefited from a degree are those old enough (when that level of education was scarce) to have got it for free. There is something a bit shit about those people even having an opinion about how much some kid should pay for their education and whether its fair or not - and the HOC is full of people around that age.

[MOZZER2]

Re: Student Loans

a bit of a debate with Martin Lewis and Badenoch this morning regarding student loans . so Eric as you appear to be the font of knowledge in this area a decent debate on this topic or just more waffle ?

�� WATCH: Kemi Badenoch clashes with Martin Lewis on her plans for student loanspic.twitter.com/pSNrUi8PkR

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 23, 2026

[Eric Cartman]

Re: Student Loans

a bit of a debate with Martin Lewis and Badenoch this morning regarding student loans . so Eric as you appear to be the font of knowledge in this area a decent debate on this topic or just more waffle ?

�� WATCH: Kemi Badenoch clashes with Martin Lewis on her plans for student loanspic.twitter.com/pSNrUi8PkR

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) February 23, 2026

Well I certainly don't know as much as some people but here's my take.

The Tory policy is a very small step in the right direction but it also appears to be designed as a decent looking headline that doesn't really cost anything. I don't know if I fully agree with Martin Lewis here either, mainly because I think they whole system needs to be torn down. Essentially he is looking at it from a progressive angle. Degrees aren't worth much at all to graduates, the thresholds have been sticky and really aren't far off min wage, if you raise the thresholds then higher earners will pay a bit less and lower earners might pay nothing. But if you believe in the current system then you should probably be looking at it from the perspective that you want as many people as possible paying off the loan and he isn't. He is completely right that lowering the interest rate for someone who is a middle earner who has eaten the high rates of the past few years is going to do nothing for them, they already owe more than they will likely ever pay back (I think plan 2 loans are wiped after 30 years), it will just grow a bit less. She probably knows that and didn't want that being pointed out on TV.

[MOZZER2]

Re: Student Loans

Well I certainly don't know as much as some people but here's my take.

The Tory policy is a very small step in the right direction but it also appears to be designed as a decent looking headline that doesn't really cost anything. I don't know if I fully agree with Martin Lewis here either, mainly because I think they whole system needs to be torn down. Essentially he is looking at it from a progressive angle. Degrees aren't worth much at all to graduates, the thresholds have been sticky and really aren't far off min wage, if you raise the thresholds then higher earners will pay a bit less and lower earners might pay nothing. But if you believe in the current system then you should probably be looking at it from the perspective that you want as many people as possible paying off the loan and he isn't. He is completely right that lowering the interest rate for someone who is a middle earner who has eaten the high rates of the past few years is going to do nothing for them, they already owe more than they will likely ever pay back (I think plan 2 loans are wiped after 30 years), it will just grow a bit less. She probably knows that and didn't want that being pointed out on TV.

so a mixed bag in your view of what Badenoch and Lewis were debating . In terms of graduate jobs I saw yesterday there were only 10,000 available last month a record low in the UK a 45% reduction on the year before . They say over 900,000 young people graduated last year

Pretty depressing reading if you have recently graduated in the UK right now no wonder so many are jumping ship and moving abroad

I notice MP's from all colours are now trying to adopt the apprenticeship route in the workplace . Something I did when i left school went to Uni about 10 years after apprenticeship to study for an HNC/D and payed myself but the cost was minimal compared to todays costs even after you account for inflation

[Eric Cartman]

Re: Student Loans

so a mixed bag in your view of what Badenoch and Lewis were debating . In terms of graduate jobs I saw yesterday there were only 10,000 available last month a record low in the UK a 45% reduction on the year before . They say over 900,000 young people graduated last year

Pretty depressing reading if you have recently graduated in the UK right now no wonder so many are jumping ship and moving abroad

I notice MP's from all colours are now trying to adopt the apprenticeship route in the workplace . Something I did when i left school went to Uni about 10 years after apprenticeship to study for an HNC/D and payed myself but the cost was minimal compared to todays costs even after you account for inflation

Yeah but the issue with that is the same as the issue with getting 50% of kids to go to university - it's designed around the current problem (youth unemployment, low-return higher education) and not what skills will the country need in 5/10/15 years.

As much as it is already talked about, I think the impact of AI on the jobs market over the next few years is being underestimated. We are pretty close to (if not already there) a situation where if you have a great idea, that's enough, you don't need the same broad ranging skillset (or capital to hire people with those skills). This is going to great for a small amount of people but the ecosystem that thrives around businesses will be less in demand - finance, web, social media, design/maintenance of internal systems and the rest, these once were all 9-5s filled by people.

Productivity will go up, politicians will pat themselves on the back but massive new problems will emerge before solutions are designed/accepted (UBI etc.). Work sucks but it does give you a structure in life.