Student loan will never be paid

fuzzzzy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81922187#Comment_81922187

Even if you accept the principle that students should make a contribution to the cost of their education, then at the very least the government should be sticking to the terms of the loan contract. Plan 2 graduates took on the loans with the expectation that the repayment threshold would rise each year with annual earnings. The freezing of the repayment threshold for 3 years from 2027 is scandalous.

TonyMMM

I used to interview candidates for quite well paid (public sector) roles which didn't specify a degree was required - but almost all the applicants had a degree of some sort, in a wide range of subjects, mostly irrelevant to the role. Their degree made absolutely no real difference to their chances of success in being employed.

Sadly a huge con was perpetrated under Blair and "New Labour" (and continued by all governments since) to make it the norm to go onto "Uni" after school when in reality the careers/jobs have never been there for many graduates who just get left struggling to find employment but now saddled with huge debt.

horsewithnoname

there should be fewer degrees and more vocational training and proper apprenticeships.
I got a (low level) civil service job with just my A levels so in some senses I spent 3 years doing a degree which has not helped me job wise. But at least I didn’t come out of it with a shed load of debt.
I don’t accept that students should pay, but certainly if they are being made to pay, the government should stick to the terms they agreed

But moving goalposts is what governments of all varieties do best.

daveyjp

The new system was classic Government sleight of hand to introduce a graduate tax, without calling it a graduate tax.

It will have been devised by top civil servants and lawyers who had a free university education.

Andy_L

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81922443#Comment_81922443

Moving to student loans was to make it affordable to achieve the "goal of 50% of young adults progressing to higher education"

Although if you look at the degrees undergrads are choosing, it is dominated by vocational degrees so its achieved that as well

whether matching the higher education percentage of more productive foreign countries was a good idea or not "I leave as an exercise for the reader". As discussing it here will probably quickly fall foul of the "no politics" rule & get the thread closed

ETA: how come I can no longer cut or bold parts of a quote?

Andy_L

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81923608#Comment_81923608

Did the T&Cs say the threshold would rise with earnings or was that an assumption?

fuzzzzy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81926297#Comment_81926297

As Martin Lewis has pointed out it was a verbal reassurance at the time and legal advice sought previously has suggested that there would not be a legal case to challenge the repayment threshold freeze, but it is morally indefensible.

What is more galling is that in comments made in interviews on Newsnight both Rachael Reeves and Georgia Gould have let it slip that the repayments are going into the general pot of taxation to help with all public finances and so are now treating loan repayments as a graduate tax and not a contract.

Sorry I wanted to add links to the interviews but can't seem to add links anymore. Basically Gould refers to funding childcare and Reeves to bringing down NHS waiting lists. Student loans were sold as contracts so students made a contribution towards their own education. The government should not be regarding it as a general tax.