Student Loans are crippling me!!

olly300

wacko911 wrote: »

The £15K threshold is far to low IMHO, 25K would be more realistic.

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The reason the threshold is so low is that lots of people who where students under the old style system are not paying their loans back. The old style threshold is set at 85% of the "average" man's working wage.

The reasons for not paying the loans back are for a variety reasons including some dodgy i.e. people who set up company's and pay themselves wages under the threshold for this and other tax reasons, people who have left the country and have no contact details, and some for genuine reasons i.e. becoming a full time mother, taking up a job in a area of the country where you are never going to earn that much, becoming a student again on grants or more loans.

Therefore with the introduction of top-up fees the government decided to introduce a system to ensure most of the money lent was paid back. Someone in the civil service realised that in some areas of the country that you can live on £15K a year in rented accommodation, and that lots of civil servants around the country actually earn less than this and can manage.

I have been a student twice- undergraduate and postgraduate with under graduate loans under the old style system. When I was an undergraduate rarely did anyone have a car and if they did it was a banger, and nearly all the arts and social science students had jobs outside uni. (Science, health, engineering and technology courses did too many hours.) When I was a postgraduate rarely did any of the postgraduates have a car simply because most people where in debt to get their postgraduate degree, but we noticed that lots of undergraduates on a campus university had cars that definitely where not bangers.

ab7167

I did an civil engineering degree, 36hrs taught time per week and I still managed to work 2 nights a week and 1 day at weekend. And I got a first class honours degree as well. So I do have minimal sympathy, I'm afraid - it is possible to work your way through uni and still get a good degree. Very, very hard work though!

Ali