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Student loans payback to be extended to 40 years

Bahnhof Strasse

Bahnhof Strasse

Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
www.bbc.co.uk

Students to pay off loans into their 60s, plans say

The government announces a shake-up of student finance in England to reduce the bill for taxpayers.
www.bbc.co.uk

Currently unpaid loans get written off after 30 years, for next years' cohort that will be 40 years, so well in to their sixties, a working lifetime of debt.

The government is proposing these changes because more students than ever are going to university - but only 25% of those who started full-time undergraduate degrees in 2020 are expected to pay back their loans in full.
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If this is correct it seems that a hell of a lot of people are going to university and taking away no material benefit from the experience at all. Surely most people go there on the promise of graduates earning more than non-graduates over the course of a lifetime? But only a quarter can manage to pay off the average debt of £45k over 30 years suggests that they aren't exactly coining it, no?
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Students to pay off loans into their 60s, plans say

The government announces a shake-up of student finance in England to reduce the bill for taxpayers.
www.bbc.co.uk

Currently unpaid loans get written off after 30 years, for next years' cohort that will be 40 years, so well in to their sixties, a working lifetime of debt.



If this is correct it seems that a hell of a lot of people are going to university and taking away no material benefit from the experience at all. Surely most people go there on the promise of graduates earning more than non-graduates over the course of a lifetime? But only a quarter can manage to pay off the average debt of £45k over 30 years suggests that they aren't exactly coining it, no?
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so this earnings bonus is 100,000 over say a forty year period, for ease of calculation. which is £2,500 a year, or £50 a week, £1.43 an hour (35 hour week).
 
I feel so sorry for anyone from lower income households aspiring to get a University degree now. It was bad enough when I became a student in 2001 having to take out a loan just to get by - of course back then fees were means tested and and being from a low earning single parent household, I was lucky not to have fees. But I still needed around £15k of loans just to pay the rent and eat, and that was on top of working. All in all it took me around 18 years to pay it off in full.

Now there's no means testing, eye watering fees, a lower earnings/payback threshold, and 40 years of being saddled with debt. All the angles upon which student fees were sold as a win win are being eliminated. As usual its the younger generation who have to suck it up without reaping the benefits their elders enjoyed.
 
skyscraper101 said:
I feel so sorry for anyone from lower income households aspiring to get a University degree now. It was bad enough when I became a student in 2001 having to take out a loan just to get by - of course back then fees were means tested and and being from a low earning single parent household, I was lucky not to have fees. But I still needed around £15k of loans just to pay the rent and eat, and that was on top of working. All in all it took me around 18 years to pay it off in full.

Now there's no means testing, eye watering fees, a lower earnings/payback threshold, and 40 years of being saddled with debt. All the angles upon which student fees were sold as a win win are being eliminated. As usual its the younger generation who have to suck it up without reaping the benefits their elders enjoyed.
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yeh i couldn't say to anyone 'go to university in the uk' with a clear conscience, it's 'see if you can get an eu passport and look into studying abroad', being as the fees in europe are in the region of a grand a year for an undergraduate course
 
Pickman's model said:
yeh i couldn't say to anyone 'go to university in the uk' with a clear conscience, it's 'see if you can get an eu passport and look into studying abroad', being as the fees in europe are in the region of a grand a year for an undergraduate course
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Of course, study in the EU. Another option made far more difficult for todays students than it was for me back in the day. Another win for Brexit. *waves union jack
 
Pickman's model said:
so this earnings bonus is 100,000 over say a forty year period, for ease of calculation. which is £2,500 a year, or £50 a week, £1.43 an hour (35 hour week).
Click to expand...

The postgraduate qualification I did at university last year has increased my hourly pay relative to my pre-covid job (for which I did four whole days' training) by, um, minus one pound twenty-five. That's assuming I only work hours the I get paid for, which I don't.

That pay cut cost me nine grand and change in tuition. My entire undergraduate degree on the other hand cost me 250 quid because I did it at a time when there was still fee support available for students from poor families.
 
SpookyFrank said:
The postgraduate qualification I did at university last year has increased my hourly pay relative to my pre-covid job (for which I did four whole days' training) by, um, minus one pound twenty-five. That's assuming I only work hours the I get paid for, which I don't.

That pay cut cost me nine grand and change in tuition. My entire undergraduate degree on the other hand cost me 250 quid because I did it at a time when there was still fee support available for students from poor families.
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none of my higher education qualifications have boosted my income and i am making myself unemployable by doing a doctorate

in fact the only job i've ever had which required a degree i was made redundant from
 
See, I read this as someone who didn't get past GCSE's, neither did Frau Bahn, yet BB1 is looking to go to uni in September for a 4 year degree. She's never sat a formal exam of any description thanks to chicken pox then covid, she's doing mocks this week and is in bits over them, reports everywhere of teens suffering breakdowns over this shit, then we see stuff like this and she doesn't believe us when we tell her it doesn't matter whether she goes or not and that not going could well be a bloody good idea...
 
There's no way that I could have afforded to go to university and do my professional qualifications, if these rules had been in place at the time.
Admittedly, that's over 40 years ago.

Having those degrees made a lot of what I've done in the intervening four decades possible, but for much of the time I don't think it made that much difference to my earnings potential, as I wasn't working in the public / academic sectors with their defined pay structures.
 
The whole going to University business is a rip off from course costs and loans, accommodation costs and a huge rental market that inflates affordability and decreases housing options for locals, to the latest attacks on lecturers pensions. Should be replaced with a system based on the Open University/ old Russian correspondence courses.
 
I'm doing a job that doesn't require a degree (although it helps) so unsure if my degree & post grad stuff has led to massive earnings compared to a me without qualifications. But I went to university before loans & fees , so my university debt was about £800 , which probably was spent on lager & curry.
 
I didn't get beyond my GCSE's but they were called O'Levels when I did them, A lack of a degree probably would have harmed my lifetime earning potential were it not for one lucky chance where I was in the right place at the right time and everyone else thought it was the wrong place. Mrs Q who unlike me had a plan for her life rather than drifting aimlessly through it did a Maths degree followed by a year of teacher training but at the time they got grants rather than loans. It has probably helped her more than hindered her especially after she returned to work from raising the kids.
I've encouraged my kids to go to Uni as well I think these days a degree is definitely more of a help than a hindrance, Eldest didn't but Son and Middle did, I think Son would not be earning anything like what he is now so it was value for him.
Middle got a nursing bursary but I believe they have been scrapped now (another dumb plan to save money) and Youngest is in her first year.
The current system though is a complete dog's dinner, clearly a law, medicine or engineering degree is going to earn you a lot more than sports science or history yet the costs to the student largely work out the same.
I would prefer to see a return to grants but definitely some thought needs putting into a system that encourages as many kids as possible to get the best education can but without loading them with loads of debt.
The current "The Market will sort it out" sledgehammer approach isn't fit for purpose.
 
Last edited:
Bahnhof Strasse said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Students to pay off loans into their 60s, plans say

The government announces a shake-up of student finance in England to reduce the bill for taxpayers.
www.bbc.co.uk

Currently unpaid loans get written off after 30 years, for next years' cohort that will be 40 years, so well in to their sixties, a working lifetime of debt.



If this is correct it seems that a hell of a lot of people are going to university and taking away no material benefit from the experience at all. Surely most people go there on the promise of graduates earning more than non-graduates over the course of a lifetime? But only a quarter can manage to pay off the average debt of £45k over 30 years suggests that they aren't exactly coining it, no?
Click to expand...

My industry (which is in the professional/creative sector I guess you could say), nobody gives a flying fuck about your qualifications, you learn on the job - if you spend 5 years at uni you're only losing ground. I don't even bother looking at that bit on their CV when hiring.

When I worked in the US it seemed to be mandatory to even get an interview but not here. Of course if you're gonna be performing a triple bypass on me then yes, I'd prefer you had actually studied.
 
The need for a degree in th creative industry has really declined since in started working in the UK 25 years ago. I remember applying for a job as a production manager (a step down for me at the time) on a BBC and being told I wouldn’t even get an interview as a runner as I didn’t have a degree. Fast forward 20 years and I was the acting head of production for one of main divisions for 18 months. In general you are still going to start at an entry level job degree or no degree - unless nepotism plays a part
 
shakespearegirl said:
The need for a degree in th creative industry has really declined since in started working in the UK 25 years ago. I remember applying for a job as a production manager (a step down for me at the time) on a BBC and being told I wouldn’t even get an interview as a runner as I didn’t have a degree. Fast forward 20 years and I was the acting head of production for one of main divisions for 18 months. In general you are still going to start at an entry level job degree or no degree - unless nepotism plays a part
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Once the foot's in the door you're sorted if you're savvy enough IME. I was chatting about this the other day with a current colleague who rose to be the head producer on good morning britain. no qualifications whatsoever, just blagged her way in and worked her way all the way up. It's gettin the foot in the door in the first place which is obv the hard part but personally I started as a typist of all things at 17, made friends with people from different depts and moved up and around.

I'm really fucking glad i didn't spend 9k a year on a degree and i feel really sorry for the kids who do. I don't mind paying a little more tax in order for it to be free for them. Otherwise we're gonna end up a generation of people who study something sensible like Law rather than something risky like the arts.
 
I did my degree as a mature student just before the cut off for the decent loans (never paid back, written off after 25 years I think it was), no fees and even had maintenance grant my flights out to China for the year abroad paid for by LEA. Did change my life as had absolutely no Chinese beforehand and now I've lived here half my life but it's not made me any money, in that I earned more in semi-skilled manual back home as a youth than anything I've done due to a fancy degree in a foreign language classical and modern. If you were starting out now about the only thing it would help with is security services jobs I'd think, maybe part of a joint honours with something like finance if you wanted to get into banking but there's enough bilingual by heritage people with practical skills to fill most posts.
 
Petcha said:
Once the foot's in the door you're sorted if you're savvy enough IME. I was chatting about this the other day with a current colleague who rose to be the head producer on good morning britain. no qualifications whatsoever, just blagged her way in and worked her way all the way up. It's gettin the foot in the door in the first place which is obv the hard part but personally I started as a typist of all things at 17, made friends with people from different depts and moved up and around.

I'm really fucking glad i didn't spend 9k a year on a degree and i feel really sorry for the kids who do. I don't mind paying a little more tax in order for it to be free for them. Otherwise we're gonna end up a generation of people who study something sensible like Law rather than something risky like the arts.
Click to expand...
I was really lucky getting my foot in the door as a receptionist in a company in Oz via the job centre! Being a high school drop out didn’t hold me back, but it was all about putting the work snd the hours in.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
See, I read this as someone who didn't get past GCSE's, neither did Frau Bahn, yet BB1 is looking to go to uni in September for a 4 year degree. She's never sat a formal exam of any description thanks to chicken pox then covid, she's doing mocks this week and is in bits over them, reports everywhere of teens suffering breakdowns over this shit, then we see stuff like this and she doesn't believe us when we tell her it doesn't matter whether she goes or not and that not going could well be a bloody good idea...
Click to expand...

I find it a bit sad uni is reduced to the economic impact. It’s so much more than that. I loved my degree, I loved the learning, loved the experiences, the living away from home…. I get it, I get all the issues and nor am I saying it’s better than not going, but I find it very sad that because of the loan system, uni is now about how much it’ll earn you, not all of the other things it can provide.
 
purenarcotic said:
I find it a bit sad uni is reduced to the economic impact. It’s so much more than that. I loved my degree, I loved the learning, loved the experiences, the living away from home…. I get it, I get all the issues and nor am I saying it’s better than not going, but I find it very sad that because of the loan system, uni is now about how much it’ll earn you, not all of the other things it can provide.
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Agree with this very strongly! Uni was the making of me as a brainy kid from a working class home who had never been away from his home town for more than a few nights (or a week once a year at a holiday camp). I had a great time, made some lifelong friends, got a good degree and left university with precisely £400 of debt. Makes me sick to think of how the boomer generation has pulled up the ladder of opportunity behind them.
 
Cloo said:
One of the things I dislike most about these loans and the cost of degrees is not just the penalty on the poorest, but also that it normalises starting adult life deep in debt. That's just not a healthy precedent to set.
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My nephew has just finished 4 years at South Bank and is totally resigned to living in debt forever and he feels ok about that, something about that does quite upset me.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
My nephew has just finished 4 years at South Bank and is totally resigned to living in debt forever and he feels ok about that, something about that does quite upset me.
Click to expand...
Exactly - it just becomes? 'You're in £35k debt? LOL, I'm in £50k' and it's like, well everyone's in debt, you'll never be out of it so why not add more?

gsv was just wondering about it last night - we are very fortunate we can take some of the cost and I think my granddad left some fairly generous sums for this to his 5 great grandkids. Not enough to pay the lot, but will cushion the blow. But of course very few people have that luxury.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
My nephew has just finished 4 years at South Bank and is totally resigned to living in debt forever and he feels ok about that, something about that does quite upset me.
Click to expand...
My niece is finishing her degree this year , she has gone into debt for mostly on-line teaching 🤔 and is planning on doing a masters , so more debt. I did a degree & post graduation courses (Teaching & a Housing post grad) & had very little debt , Britain didn't go bankrupt funding me & others like me . I marched against this sort of shite in the 80s (sorry, we didn't stop it)
 
Gotta make that state imposed usury pay if they're gonna be be able to flog it off to their fincap pals.
 
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