The MSE Forum will be undergoing some maintenance this evening. As a result, some users may experience temporary performance issues. Please use the Site Feedback board to report anything major. Thank you for your patience.

The viral letter about mis-sold student loans due to retrospective interest hikes is

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.




Please click 'post reply' to discuss below.

Comments

  • Madness... Earning 24k per annum and complains about paying so so little off the loan... It should nevhave been such a 'rich' deal in the first place.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103
    Name Dropper First Post First Anniversary
    Forumite
    While it's a good deal it's not especially generous because the students are also likely to pay more in income tax, NI and VAT over the years due to their probably higher incomes.

    But whether it's a good deal or a bad deal, the change in terms is a problem. People should not have to wonder about that added risk to their planning when they are considering going to university and now they do have to factor that extra government-based risk into the planning. It's not enough to make it a bad idea to go and take the loans but it will probably unnecessarily discourage some people who could benefit from university.

    If parents want to help out one of the best things they can do is help with a property purchase since that long term can cut living expenses, while for many the student loan(s) won't ever be fully repaid. Many other better options for both student and parent than paying off the student loans.
  • agarnett
    agarnett Posts: 1,301 Forumite
    edited 27 May 2016 at 4:36PM
    Yes ... I resisted being the first to comment on this thread but the limited response to it should tell you something.

    Your MSE'ers won't really understand the point of your criticism of the letter. Why does it need you to criticise it?

    No-one else is criticising government effectively at the moment about the misselling of 2012 onwards Student Loans. Your own criticisms appear very guarded as if there is something to lose. Perhaps with your political nouse you know that the scheme and its supporting laws and the pervading political climate mean it is rigged when measured against all common law standards and precedents.

    Therefore it might become a battle with limited chances of success, and failure is something your brand can't be associated with.

    Surely it is a bigger failure to just let it continue to happen?

    You've criticised someone else's attempt a taking a stand and creating a head of steam. Does that mean you are planning a better one yourself (please)?

    All the recent loans have been missold. The government and universities have been disgracefully dishonest in overstating average prospects for future university graduates versus their peers whose plan was to head straight into work instead.

    You have to be an unusually well-rounded, specialist graduate such as an accomplished engineering graduate who can also sell themselves maturely, and perhaps be capable of instantly occupying a production or research team role without much further training in order to be marketable enough to rapidly break away from the £21,000 pa 9% extra (subscription) tax threshold.

    That's essentially what the loans become for all those you now say are unlikely ever to pay back the loans (which you now seem to be suggesting is perhaps the fate of the majority - I don't think you ever said that before?)

    I call it a subscription tax, because for the majority, that's all it is, you are paying a regular subscription for the letters after your name - something that is a complete waste of time beyond the first few years of graduation for anyone, let alone those who choose soft courses to indulge interests which are seen by the employment market as useless to business.

    How much more do you wish to demoralise the majority of young people trying to decide if it is worth it to go to university?

    Clearly it was worth it to you in the way it shaped you in a very interesting melting pot in the thick of politics and legals and economics in London, and it was worth it to me 40 years ago even when I followed the grammar school sausage machine into a pure science course in London, but went home to the country most weekends so never really understanding what university could really have been about. I wasn't unusual then in living that way, and it is quite typical now to live at home and do to the local university but forget it at weekends. Not particularly clever, but ...

    For those like me who need direction into and even through university, the current system can be hopeless especially on those soft courses where there is less than 9 hours teaching to attend a week and virtual no tutorial or study group structure, yet still costing £9,000pa tuition.

    As I say, you generally have to be wise beyond your years as well as a good all rounder who has qualified for, and chosen the right kind of courses (generally STEM, but topflight Business Studies and PPE are obviously as good for generalists who aspire to be chief executives) to really be able to make the demoralising demotivating Student Loan subscription fade quickly to become an insignificant matter.

    We all measure future prospects so much in average salary terms. We think we need money to constantly buy the latest stuff. Half the world's economy is about the general populations' love affair with stuff. The other half is financial services which is basically just a casino, but does also at one end cater for credit most people use now to buy stuff.

    People who buy stuff (all of us) need somewhere convenient to go to find it. Retail malls and parks - ever bigger ones, manned by thousands of ... you guessed it ...

    Imagine just how many graduates now enter retail and never get beyond being supervisors or duty managers with the keys to lock up at 10pm in the big shopping malls, who get home and ask themselves "Have I really done as well as I hoped by going to university? Couldn't I have got just as far without the degree?"

    Am I happy? Why am I paying 9% more than my work colleagues who started at 18 in the same company on the top slice of my actually very meagre UK type dumbed down salary cf. the more highly developed societies in Europe? Why oh why did I let my teachers and David Willetts and Martin Lewis tell me it was a no brainer? Every weekend we go to the big shopping malls and are served by ... graduates. Graduates who still can't get what they originally aspired to without loans from financial services companies. The best these retail mall graduates can aspire to recently is to perhaps get across the mall into a mobile telecoms selling role and from there get into a retail selling role in a bank and from there ... just a few ... get through the glass walls and recruited by the investment and trading arms of the banks. If they manage that, and they'll perhaps be aged closer to 30 than 21 they might find a few people who graduated in similar years, some of whom are now running their own shows and earning big six figures!

    Those few will be some of the well-rounded smart engineering graduates of equal age to our shop assistant strivers but who were snapped up by the banks straight from university, and in the case of the other narrow stream destined for greater things, some of the well-heeled, well-advised, well-sponsored, well-networked (by connected parents) who did PPE or Business studies at the right universities! But these few graduate shop assistant strivers who make it against the odds, will be a tiny minority of that majority of graduates who have little but wage-slavery and loans for a lifetime to look forward to. Plus as they will have arrived late for their unexpected seats on the gravy train, they'll never do as well as the STEM stream and the well-heeled Business Studies / PPE lot.

    It is a very sorry picture of UK government education, social and employment policies we all endure and seemingly tolerate.

    Greed and deprivation - we're the most obvious national example of what happens when the two meet, with some of the biggest national variances between CEO and shopfloor pay / benefits and living standards, yet still most might ignorantly say "What's the problem?"

    The problem is that our young people are groomed to think that way - it's not a good advert for Britain.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 342.4K Banking & Borrowing
  • 249.9K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 449.4K Spending & Discounts
  • 234.6K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 607K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 172.8K Life & Family
  • 247.4K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 15.8K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards