Almost 1.8m people owe £50,000 or more in student debt
July 2, 2024
Almost 1.8m people owe £50,000 or more in student debt
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2xxp2gv4d1o
by Enzonia
14 comments
I think my student debt is somewhere in the ballpark of £130,000 these days – the result of getting through 6 year of medicine with two years out for health reasons. I’m now working full time and paying several hundred a month, yet the number keeps going up… Our current student loan system just seems like an incredibly inefficient way of doing a graduate tax – plus one that detrimentally targets lower earners.
that feels… extremely normal? 3x 9.5k = £28.5k + 3x 5k for maintenance loan = £43.5k
the interest is tied to inflation. We’ve had like, 5% inflation the last few years on average, so that’s like 2k per year, so if you don’t get a job related to your degree you’d expect £50k within a few years.
Not to mention if you do a foundation year, that’s an extra 14k off the bat, so you *start off* with more than 50k debt, before we even get into interest.
Or, if you get more in maintenance loans because your parents are broke. or if you do a postgrad.
edit: why the fuck does reddit interpret “+” as markdown syntax for a bulleted list?
After a certain amount it just a tax. Broken system were a private company are making fuck tonne of money from it.
At least it’s not the 6 figures that the US students owe, seems like a pretty normal amount?
And so much of that has added basically no “value add” to the economy. Employers don’t need or care about the hundreds of thousands of graduates with low value degrees in things like Criminology, Psychology, Media Studies, Marketing, Sociology, Politics, English (and especially not when those degrees are from low to mid ranking universities).
It’s only meaningful if it’s either a mostly vocational course such as medicine or if it’s from a top university such as Cambridge (and even then the degree but is often irrelevant to the job, it’s just a form of intelligence signalling)
The whole thing is massively dysfunctional, young people loading up on high interest debt which weighs down their earnings and often is simply not really needed for work. And then the taxpayers will foot the bill for the tens of billions of debt that’s never repaid.
I remember being angry about student loans as I was one of the first years to have to them. Walked out of undergrad with £12k debt on a plan 1.
Now it seems very lucky compared to those who came later. All three major parties have became obsessed with the idea that higher education should make money, not create a more skilled population which helped the economy over the longer term. The coalition plan (current plan 2) is especially insane as they knew at the time it would loose money.
To think, my final year of uni was in the pandemic. I did a practice based course and the industry I was meant to go into shut down meaning I had to completely retrain.
I now owe almost one hundred thousand pounds. Uni even billed me for the final year, which they literally wouldn’t let me attend. I still got a degree, but it was completely worthless. How they were allowed to bill me for that final year I will never know..
People on these comments saying this is “normal” but we have some of the highest student loan debt in the world with a stagnating economy where it’s increasingly difficult to get a job, cost of living is so hard that people are living with their parents into their 30’s which has reduced people’s ability to find work in other cities which would boost their career and their social mobility.
This isn’t normal, except here.
I look forward to Labour improving things with their vague and unspecified plan.
I was lucky to leave at 25k debt, when interest was low. Still quiet a bit to go, but at least the 1st 10 years weren’t astronomical interest rates. I’m now paying back and half of my payments are interest – would be cheaper to get a commercial loan.
If you take an indivudal who will pay it off. The govt is making a profit, but not as a whole.
Makes me sick the idea that if it was a different time it could have nearly been 100k.
System is broken, if want to support the development of skills that do need a degree. Again, the young being shafted. Absolutely disgusting for doctors.
I am proud to be one of the 60 people in the country who owes over £200,000 to Student Loans Company.
My balance when i checked this morning was £203,456.23
Last year i was charged just over £10,000 interest. I paid off just over £200 of my loan last tax year.
I’ve not finished uni yet and mine is at 98k.
I started in 2016 but developed panic disorder in 2018 so went part time so undergraduate took 4 years. Started my masters part time, first year was fine but second year was a soap opera leading to developing chronic fatigue, took a year out to improve my health (spoiler alert it did not) now in 4th year of my master’s finishing the last bits of work to just get the bloody thing done.
TLDR at 98k before finishing masters, though now an 8th year.
It’s kind of messed up when you think about how we make the decision to put ourselves in that much debt when we’re 17. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised it maybe wasn’t the smartest decision.
There is no such thing as student debt. It is a capitalisation myth designed to create lurid headlines and confuse the gullible.
As Martin Lewis says
> All student loans since 1998 have been repaid through the payroll just like income tax. What this means is that once you’re working, your employer will deduct the repayments from your salary before you get it. So the amount you receive in your bank account each month already has it removed.
>This means that if you’re an employee, no debt collectors will come chasing as you don’t have a choice in the matter and will have paid it automatically.
The ‘student loan’ system is really just an elaborate smoke and mirrors excuse to charge a 9% graduate tax. A tax that doesn’t apply to the ‘well heeled’ who can get daddy to ‘pay for’ their education.
Universities are funded from government spending and general taxation like they always were.
We should write them all off, and switch the 9% graduate tax to employers where it belongs. If fast food joints insist on degrees to flip burgers they should pay for the privilege.
14 comments
I think my student debt is somewhere in the ballpark of £130,000 these days – the result of getting through 6 year of medicine with two years out for health reasons. I’m now working full time and paying several hundred a month, yet the number keeps going up… Our current student loan system just seems like an incredibly inefficient way of doing a graduate tax – plus one that detrimentally targets lower earners.
that feels… extremely normal?
3x 9.5k = £28.5k
+ 3x 5k for maintenance loan = £43.5k
the interest is tied to inflation. We’ve had like, 5% inflation the last few years on average, so that’s like 2k per year, so if you don’t get a job related to your degree you’d expect £50k within a few years.
Not to mention if you do a foundation year, that’s an extra 14k off the bat, so you *start off* with more than 50k debt, before we even get into interest.
Or, if you get more in maintenance loans because your parents are broke.
or if you do a postgrad.
edit: why the fuck does reddit interpret “+” as markdown syntax for a bulleted list?
After a certain amount it just a tax. Broken system were a private company are making fuck tonne of money from it.
At least it’s not the 6 figures that the US students owe, seems like a pretty normal amount?
And so much of that has added basically no “value add” to the economy. Employers don’t need or care about the hundreds of thousands of graduates with low value degrees in things like Criminology, Psychology, Media Studies, Marketing, Sociology, Politics, English (and especially not when those degrees are from low to mid ranking universities).
It’s only meaningful if it’s either a mostly vocational course such as medicine or if it’s from a top university such as Cambridge (and even then the degree but is often irrelevant to the job, it’s just a form of intelligence signalling)
The whole thing is massively dysfunctional, young people loading up on high interest debt which weighs down their earnings and often is simply not really needed for work. And then the taxpayers will foot the bill for the tens of billions of debt that’s never repaid.
I remember being angry about student loans as I was one of the first years to have to them. Walked out of undergrad with £12k debt on a plan 1.
Now it seems very lucky compared to those who came later. All three major parties have became obsessed with the idea that higher education should make money, not create a more skilled population which helped the economy over the longer term. The coalition plan (current plan 2) is especially insane as they knew at the time it would loose money.
To think, my final year of uni was in the pandemic. I did a practice based course and the industry I was meant to go into shut down meaning I had to completely retrain.
I now owe almost one hundred thousand pounds. Uni even billed me for the final year, which they literally wouldn’t let me attend. I still got a degree, but it was completely worthless. How they were allowed to bill me for that final year I will never know..
People on these comments saying this is “normal” but we have some of the highest student loan debt in the world with a stagnating economy where it’s increasingly difficult to get a job, cost of living is so hard that people are living with their parents into their 30’s which has reduced people’s ability to find work in other cities which would boost their career and their social mobility.
This isn’t normal, except here.
I look forward to Labour improving things with their vague and unspecified plan.
I was lucky to leave at 25k debt, when interest was low. Still quiet a bit to go, but at least the 1st 10 years weren’t astronomical interest rates. I’m now paying back and half of my payments are interest – would be cheaper to get a commercial loan.
If you take an indivudal who will pay it off. The govt is making a profit, but not as a whole.
Makes me sick the idea that if it was a different time it could have nearly been 100k.
System is broken, if want to support the development of skills that do need a degree. Again, the young being shafted. Absolutely disgusting for doctors.
I am proud to be one of the 60 people in the country who owes over £200,000 to Student Loans Company.
My balance when i checked this morning was £203,456.23
Last year i was charged just over £10,000 interest. I paid off just over £200 of my loan last tax year.
I’ve not finished uni yet and mine is at 98k.
I started in 2016 but developed panic disorder in 2018 so went part time so undergraduate took 4 years. Started my masters part time, first year was fine but second year was a soap opera leading to developing chronic fatigue, took a year out to improve my health (spoiler alert it did not) now in 4th year of my master’s finishing the last bits of work to just get the bloody thing done.
TLDR at 98k before finishing masters, though now an 8th year.
It’s kind of messed up when you think about how we make the decision to put ourselves in that much debt when we’re 17. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised it maybe wasn’t the smartest decision.
There is no such thing as student debt. It is a capitalisation myth designed to create lurid headlines and confuse the gullible.
As Martin Lewis says
>
All student loans since 1998 have been repaid through the payroll just like income tax. What this means is that once you’re working, your employer will deduct the repayments from your salary before you get it. So the amount you receive in your bank account each month already has it removed.
>This means that if you’re an employee, no debt collectors will come chasing as you don’t have a choice in the matter and will have paid it automatically.
The ‘student loan’ system is really just an elaborate smoke and mirrors excuse to charge a 9% graduate tax. A tax that doesn’t apply to the ‘well heeled’ who can get daddy to ‘pay for’ their education.
Universities are funded from government spending and general taxation like they always were.
We should write them all off, and switch the 9% graduate tax to employers where it belongs. If fast food joints insist on degrees to flip burgers they should pay for the privilege.
Read Martin’s guide on student loans at Money Saving Expert: [https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-england-plan-5/](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-england-plan-5/)
But most importantly stop worrying, get clued up and call out the ridiculous politicians who came up with this mess.