MSE News: End to interest-free student loans as 1.5% rate revealed

atypical

Using cost to siphon out those who aren't well suited for degrees is a blunt and potentially unfair tool. When people start talking about the American system as an aspiration you know something is going wrong.

What we need is to move away from the "you need a degree to live" attitude which was fostered by the previous Government. And I don't blame their thinking, you really do need a degree to be a 'professional' in the traditional sense. But not everyone wants to, needs to or can be a 'professional'.

N1AK

MiserlyMartin wrote: »

Employers find that many of them haven't a clue in the real world, lacking common sense and work skills and I have worked with many of these clueless ex grads.

I've worked with far too many people with decades of work experience, a complete lack of common sense and near innumeracy and/or illiteracy. Fortunately I don't feel the need to generalise. I'll happily hire older candidates without degrees if they are the best choice.

MSE_Martin

FATBALLZ wrote: »

I agree another crap article written in a completely misleading way. The 1.5% rate has hardly just been revealed, it has been known from March (assuming the base rate stayed at 0.5% which was always very likely). This is business as usual. Still, not quite as bad as the article recommending people to book with travel companies on the brink of going bust.

Just got back from my break and am reading this and think its unfair

That smply isn't true, it has always been a case that the post 98 loans were LIKELY to be set at

Basket of bank base rate + 1% or RPI whichever is lower

Yet the government would not confirm this would happen, so while we did expect it, it would be wrong to say we knew this was happening.

This policy with a new government has only just been confirmed (the day the story was written) - whether they could have changed it or not is questionable, but certainly it is completely erroneous to say we knew that already.

As for the clarity of the info - this is a quick news piece, it doesn't go into detail on student loan interest,

The main guide is this

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/student-loans-repay

which will be updated by the time of Wed's email and takes you trhough it in detail

Martin

glider3560

I have to agree with Martin here. Since last year when the previous government tinkered with our student loans contract by introducing new legislation, I thought it would set a trend for future governments to do the same. Therefore we didn't really know what the rate would be until an actual announcement was made. I expect this will be the case every year until we are back on track with interest rates being higher than inflation.

callum9999

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

I thought we owned the banks :mad: - shows that the banks are too powerful and should have been allowed to fall.

How much more are the ordinary man and woman in the street going to be made to suffer for a bunch of greedy scumbag bankers :mad:

My DS will now leave Uni with a debt of £30,000 + and we can't afford to support her so does that mean that the poor will now be pushed out of University education again.

How much lower will this carp government go? (I use a small G because they are a minority coalition and we should demand a General Election)
First the lies on V.A.T. then winter fuel allowances, bus passes, pension age ( I have had 5 years added to mine), pushing the disabled out to work when there are no jobs or the jobs that there are are taken by Eastern Europeans for low wages

Why would we own the banks? The government owns a bit of it but the rest are private companies... And by "greedy scumbag bankers" - I assume you mean the very people who created the funds to provide the credit to the "ordinary man and woman in the street" in the first place?

No, you only pay back 9% of what you earn over £15k, not really a large amount and far more generous than any other loan around. I'd question what they'd been doing at university for 3 years if they aren't able to manage a budget around that.

And I take it your pension being pushed back to 5 years later is because your a woman? If so, why should women, who have a longer life expectancy than men, get a lower pension age? And otherwise, pensions were introduced when you were expected to die shortly after retirement. Where do you expect all the money to fund all these things you want is coming from? Our debt levels are already unsustainable and you want them to add on a load more? The problem with people today is they feel they are entitled to more than is practical - just look at Greece... And who is pushing disabled out to work? They only have to work if they are able to.

farso

MiserlyMartin wrote: »

If you ask me

... No one did.

Your opinions are closed minded and very generalised. If you went to university, do you put yourself in the same category? If not, how do you have any knowledge to judge the people who do?

There are lots of rubbish courses out there and lots of people who do rubbish courses because they have not decided what they would like to do as a job, but there are many other, very talented people who go to university who should not be put off by the cost of it. In particular they should not be put off by the closed minded people in this world such as yourself. Perhaps if you like the US way of life, you should live there? I cant see that any of us will be complaining! :rotfl: