Rachel Reeves tells LBC student loan system is ‘fair’ amid fury as graduates rack up thousands of pounds of debt interest
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/rachel-reeves-tells-lbc-student-loan-system-is-fair-amid-fury-as-graduates-rack-5HjdRQH_2/
Posted by AnonymousTimewaster
40 Comments
“Student loan system is fair” says Chancellor who went to university without having to pay any tuition fees.
“Freebies for meee, but not for theee” is Starmer and Reeves’ mantra.
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Prehaps we could withdraw some funding for the unemployed and foriegn nationals and have free university instead?
It punishes success and ambition – Rachel from accounts proving why she has that nickname.
Then cancel and or forgive student loans you bitch. Plan 1 repayments are a fucking shot to the kneecap.
I was incredibly lucky to be the very last year that loans were at £3k a year. When I talk to friends and colleagues who went after, it sounds fucking bleak
Easy for her to say when she benefited from university either being free or very low costing.
I remember when the 9k threshold was brought in and we were told there would be competition and only the genuinely world leading institutions would be charging the top whack… And then everywhere from Oxford to Brunel charged the maximum.
I’m on north of £75k and only tickling the principle. God knows what you need to be earning to pay it off before it expires.
Just wait for private equity to get their hands on the student loans and then 🚀
If I was actually compliant I’d likely pay back £200k-250k over the next couple of decades.
I’d hardly call that fair, but fuck me for actually doing alright I suppose. No thanks to my degree might I add, which isn’t their fault but just before the “you’re only where you are because of uni” crowd weigh in.
If it was actually fair I’d happily pay, but 4-6x what I borrowed is absurd so they can get fucked.
Infuriates me
“So if you are able to get a job that pays a good wage, you’ll pay that money back”
Well no shit, but the amount you have to earn to actually beat the huge interest rate is nuts.
“Around half of people go to university today, but half don’t. And it is not right that people who don’t go to university are having to bear all the cost for others to do so.”
Absolutely ridiculous argument. Should we just not bother with university all together then, it forms a part of the investment for the collective good of society. The UK will fall behind without it. Not to mention the disincentive for doctors and other professions that require higher education.
Are universities are one of the last remaining great things about the UK, let’s make sure we can keep that up and enable our citizens from all economic backgrounds to go, dependent on their ability.
I don’t really see why any student loan should have an interest element if it is provided by the government. Additionally why index to RPI? When the government debt is measured we adjust it to CPIH, RPI is usually higher than this.
From a BBC article from 2019:
‘Gordon Marsden, Labour’s shadow minister for higher education, said the report showed that the combination of “eye-watering tuition fees and huge interest payments is unfair and unsustainable”.’
Why the change in position, Chancellor?
She’s clearly trying to make sure no one under 35 ever votes for them.
Labour really are trying their best to lose the next GE arent they?
So the Tory Lite who went to University for free says the current system of usury and extortion is fair.
It should be paid for through general taxation on everyone, just like everything else.
Every single time the government tells you it s “fair” you are 100% being shafted.
I started with a £48k student loan when I left Uni 8 years ago.
I started a job straight out of uni on £26k a year.
I’ve had a few promotions over that time am on just over £50k a year now, this months payslip before tax was £5597 and I had £290 taken for student loans. This is higher than normal because of night shifts over the Xmas period.
I checked my student loan just now and its on £59k.
I’m doing quite well after university and there is 0% chance of me paying this off. I don’t understand how much you would have to be on to actually stand a chance
It’s working as it’s meant to. It’s a backdoor graduate tax.
As a student I have no problem paying for it, too many people in this country go to university for it to be free, it worked when less than 10% went to uni, it can’t work when 50% go.
What I do have a problem with is signing a contract that states explicit things like repayment threshold and then the government completely going back on it and there is nothing I can do about it.
Student loans should not be thought of as a tax by the treasury. They were a loan to allow people to go to uni, and the interest rate should broadly match inflation so that the amount of value the borrower is repaying is the same as what they took out. They are not and should not be a tax on graduating.
Remember when they sold the loans off and jacked up the interest rate? Ah, usury, what could go wrong?
If they still had grants (so poorer students on maximum maintenance loans don’t end up borrowing 30% more) and kept interest close to inflation like the original loan plan then MAYBE it would be fair. Also, people whose parents paid for everything don’t have any debt to pay off. As it is, the system is unfair and hits two groups the hardest: students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and graduates earning less. It doesn’t just hinder social mobility, it slaps a 9% poll tax on earnings above a low threshold, actually making graduates poorer than their parents’ generation in real terms.
Getting a higher paying job as she suggests isn’t easy as it sounds, and forcing people to take the highest paying job to pay the debt off could hurt the economy significantly; we don’t want our best scientists and engineers going into finance just because it means they’ll earn the £90k p/a they need to pay off their student loan interest, rather than the £40-50k they’d make working in academia or industry.
The only thing unfair about it is how the people paying it off have to pay for the people that don’t pay it off.
Tell me why Mr A* A* A* A* going to Oxford has to have a worse student loan just to subsidise Mr FFF going to Wolverhampton with no prospects.
The entire system is a sham stealing prospects from smart hardworking kids so that objectively weaker students can go party at degree mills.
Yeah, it’s not fair because most students won’t pay it back, so the taxpayers foot the bill. £290 billion in outstanding student debt
Student loan system is fair,says moron of the Exchequer as tens of thousands rack up unassailable debt that will be a burden on them all their life and eventually has to be wiped off.
We’re not pensioners though, so I guess screwing us is fair
Rachel Reeves, whose university education was free, thinks the student loan system is fair, does she?
I don’t see her volunteering to pay what we all know is intended to be a graduate tax but would’ve been too unpopular to implement as one so they just imposed it on kids instead
Worth noting that almost nobody who paid tuition fees, was old enough to vote when it was implemented. It was literally just a tax on future generations who had no say in it
She’s a cunt
I was one of the idiot kids who never want to Uni because i thought id never be able to afford it. This was when student loans just came in and i never understood them and thought everyone who went to uni just had more money.
Students loans are a scam and under-educated an entire generation.
Come on Rachel, do better. It’s not fair. Stop gouging with interest.
It IS fair..
To the shareholders of the loans companies.
Not to the students though.
People call it a graduate tax but it is exclusively on people who couldn’t pay up front and who are below a certain age.
Put the same tax on graduates of any age and background and support will dry up real fast.
If you are going to university and will likely end up in a well paid job that offsets it, then I can see that. It’s not exactly fair for an investment banker to receive 60k tuition and living expenses on the state and then not give back their fair share of that when they make their millions.
And if you go to university but never earn more than £26,000 (or higher depending on a few things), then you never repay a penny.
The only thing I would say is unfair is that if you earn £1 million then you would quickly repay your loan and not incur much interest. If you earn less than £26k, then you don’t repay anything. But if you earn £40 – 60k then you can end up paying quite a bit of interest and you’re not in a position to pay it off very quickly. But they’re looking into this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8XJMDXVO5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8XJMDXVO5U)
About 30 mins into this video is an interview with the chair of the APPG on universities talking about that last bit.
At this point you could just move abroad. They have no way of finding you in another country and have never sued anyone abroad.
The student loan system is purpose built to take 10% of the national debt and give it to teenagers to carry in their pockets. That’s it, that’s the deal.
The only reason the way the system is setup as it is, is because Oxbridge thought they should have got more money, so they made a patchwork of changes which resulted in Plan 2 loans, there was really no other consideration than to make Oxbridge more money.
The system was never designed to be fair or balanced in any way, and saying so now is just a complete lie.
All they gotta do is charge interest whilst studying and remove it afterwards and I would gladly pay 2 or 3x my original price smh
I think you could argue that a 50k loan for RPI+3% and written off after N years is still better than what the private sector would offer for that amount.
I think unfairness comes from comparison with the previous deals and tbh the poor quality of teaching you get from some courses.
I know this is going to sound like right wing lunacy – but I actually think a lot of the social development benefit you get from the university experience could be replicated via a national service program ie ability to live in different parts of the country+ independently and meet new people.
Impossible to listen when this always comes from people who didn’t pay.
It’s fair because her donors (and subsequently herself and her mates) are making billions off us, creating a labour force that slaves away for them for 30+ years repaying the interest on the predatory loan they gave us
You don’t pay the debt back after 30yrs
It’s not an actual debt which affects you from buying a house or obtaining a loan
You only pay so much back when you earn over the threshold
It is nothing like debt from America when obtaining a college degree