student loan mis information

mcpitman

Deleted_User said:

mcpitman said:

kaMelo said:

mcpitman said:

With those numbers it clearly explains why going to Uni has to have a financial pay off for the investment made.

Unless the degree you are doing puts you into the upper quartile of earners in the country (c80k pa+), within 5 years of graduation, it just isn't worth it.

18 year olds can make an informed choice, and if they graduate with debt, then that is a known factor at the start of the Degree journey that has to be considered.

Or it is a requirement for the role you wish to pursue. For some careers a degree is a necessary rather than a choice.

Earnings of £80,000 plus also puts you in a much smaller group than the upper quartile too. 

Then do the maths and choose a different career. I'm not saying there is a right or wrong choice. But there definitely is a financial choice to be made. To consciously choose a financial commitment and then moan about repaying it, just doesn't sit right with me.

£80k pa is about upper quartile earnings give or take a few grand. Please feel free to evidence otherwise.

According to the IFS calculator, if you earn £80,000 a year you are in the top 2% of earners in the UK
Their numbers say if you earn more than £737 a week equivalent after tax, you are in the top 9% of earners

This is in line with the government numbers (from 2019) which says £78,500 before tax puts you top 5%

Top quartile is £37,800

Median disposable household income in the UK in 2017/18 was about £37,000 according to the ONS

Feel free to provide evidence to support your claim though, burden of proof fallacy and all that

Well I stand corrected. Read an article the other week, I have clearly misunderstood the quartiles, or had some sort of brain fart.

Happily educated on that point.

My other opinion remains - it is a conscious choice to run up the Uni debt.

TripleH

Do 'you' need a degree to get the job / career 'you' want?

Some professions don't need degrees or even A levels. With accounting you can leave school at 16, study for the AAT and if you want for the ACA and qualify at the same age (or sooner) than a graduate, but with 5 years of work experience behind you and minimal student debt. Once you're professionally qualified few will care about you not having a degree.

I wished I did the above.

diggingdude

mcpitman said:

With those numbers it clearly explains why going to Uni has to have a financial pay off for the investment made.

Unless the degree you are doing puts you into the upper quartile of earners in the country (c80k pa+), within 5 years of graduation, it just isn't worth it.

18 year olds can make an informed choice, and if they graduate with debt, then that is a known factor at the start of the Degree journey that has to be considered.

I would love this. Have to have a degree to be a social worker. I agree I deserve £80k

grumiofoundation

sallyhar said:

Hi Martin

I am a fan but I think by constantly telling kids not to see the loan as a barrier to education you are not acknowledging the infairness of the system. My daughter is in her second year at St Andrews. We are a very normal family. My husband is a police officer and I am a Domestic Energy Assessor . My daughter will leave Uni with a £60000 debt . Most of her friends will leave with no debt at all. And this is my biggest problem with the student loan . Rich children leave with no debt. Their parents pay the fees and maintenance. Which is often much less than they were paying for private education. When my daughter starts to earn a good salary she will be paying 9% more tax on anything she earns over the threshold. So she will always be worse off than her cohort if she does well and the gap widens . Coming from a poorer family should not mean that you are worse off in your working life . I think that by telling kids to ignore the debt is not addressing the real issue of inequality in our society. And although the debt does not appear on your credit score it does affect the affordability of mortgages etc . So it does have an impact on the future of poorer children. This issue needs addressing. especially as the interest is so high on the loan. Inequality in education and life chances should always be at the forefront of Government policy.

Lot of rich friends!

Most likely some/many of those rich friends will never earn enough to have actually actually paid back the amount their parents paid for them upfront. 

I don't believe Martin Lewis says to 'ignore the debt' completely. 
What he says to do is to ignore the headline figure since for many students they will never pay this amount back so it makes no difference if it is 60k or 100k.
Edit: I also don't really see what the 'mis' information is - MSE provides all the info?

The only people who pay it back are high(er) earners. Yes you are right that for those earning over the threshold whose parents could afford to pay for Uni upfront will get more in their pay packet than those with a loan.

One solution would be to make university free for everyone.

Well then the rich parents can just gift their kids 60k.

So overall the rich kids are still 60k up.

Inequality in education and life chances should always be at the forefront of Government policy.

I agree.
Although student loans are quite a long way down the list of the problems with education in this country. 

grumiofoundation

Deleted_User said:

phillw said:

sallyhar said:
I think that by telling kids to ignore the debt is not addressing the real issue of inequality in our society.

The alternative is to only allow people to go to university who can afford to. I'm not sure how that helps.

If you're arguing that we should somehow abandon the concept of money, then I think that is beyond the scope of the advice that can be given here.

You don't pay it back unless you earn enough. Some people can be better off not going to university, but you miss out on the lifestyle and you can't ever know whether it was really the right choice or not.

So don't worry about it.

I would flip that around - the fees came in as a result of the frankly idiotic idea that we need millions of graduates every year so needed to expand university courses and admissions, and raise money from that. Reducing the number of students doing degrees and limiting it to areas that need a degree while funding more technical courses (the old polytechnic style vocational things) / apprenticeships etc would allow for lower fees, grants etc and reduce people entering the jobs market with useless degrees and lots of debt

Although I agree university may not be the best path for everyone if you cut the numbers of students which groups lose out on the chance to go to university?

I would expect Tarquin for oxfordshire who needs 1-to-1 tutition as well as his private education to scrape a B at A-level is still probably going to university.

Whereas students from deprived areas, underperforming schools are going to be the ones who find it (even) harder to get to university.