Martin: Student loan statements are dangerous & misleading - so check out our redesign - MSE News

callum9999 wrote: »

It is completely true.

I didn't imply anything - your scatterbrain has made up what you think my argument is. I couldn't possibly believe that as I AM a shelf-stacker who went to university. I am using shelf-stacker to describe a low paying job - because it is. Do you know what the words contradictory and inconsistent mean? As I haven't made any claims about this before now, it's physically impossible for me to be either of those things...

I do understand - I merely disagree with you... I don't think you remotely understand it though. Low paid workers being removed from income tax (stop saying "tax" - they pay taxes) IS a generous stance from the government. All the other un-named countries you're idolising who don't have a large tax free allowance don't have rich citizens - they merely make the poor even poorer. In fact, a huge proportion of them are earning even less than you do in this country even before you factor in the tax they have to pay.

Obviously I do not agree as my ENTIRE ARGUMENT has been that university education shouldn't be free if you can afford to pay for it. Though perhaps I should clarify that in your cloud cuckoo land where everyone is rich and there's tonnes of tax money just lying around, free education would make sense.

Your ranting about child abuse and being groomed is incredibly bizarre.



Because that is YOUR OPINION. It is not a fact and I do not have to accept your word as gospel.

I like the idea of charging for higher education as it frees up money to save people's lives - something I think is more important - while still allowing anyone who wants to go to university to do so. You can disagree that there are better uses for that money elsewhere, you cannot state it as fact.

To me that sounds like totally misguided and useless pontificating, I'm afraid. For a start, and in case you hadn't noticed life expectancy in the UK has reduced inexplicably - inexplicably that is, if you ignore the worrying trend of the elderly who go into hospital with one non-life threatening condition then catching unrelated pneumonia because of the p-poor standard of attentive nursing and never coming out again.

So, "...frees up money to save people's lives..." you say? You are joking I hope? Where is that happening? Perhaps you are impressed by money spent on expensive shiney helicopters that can save the lives of some stab and shooting victims where in the past they may have bled out on the pavement or in the park (still do)? Helicopters and helipads on hospitals are more important PR than attentive nursing perhaps, and both have to be prioritised over free university education. Ask yourself why.

It was you who introduced the word "shelf stacker"- one which is not a polite term and has always been derogatory. I don't care if you once were one or if you still are one. You've used the word carelessly. You seem now to look down your nose at those who know no better than that job. The language you choose would seem to betray your real thinking.

Clearly you don't think shelf-stacker wages should be doubled and then subject to taxation, else you may have said so by now - so what is the benefit of you having paid and gone through that struggle to educate yourself above shelf-stacker level unless you plan to do better?

Oh but wait - I think you are now saying you are a graduate but nevertheless have now become, or have remained a shelf-stacker? Are you planning ever to be anything else? Perhaps as a graduate you may now expect rapid promotion now into the store management team and beyond? That I can appreciate.

But currently I am not sure if you are seeking sympathy or are recommending the shelf-stacker job as a lifestyle choice? A shelf-stacker job doesn't require the jobholder to hold a degree does it? I do appreciate that many undergraduates have little choice than to work as shelf-stackers to support their economies whilst at university, and such a job may indeed be therapeutic to the extent that it gives a break from study and doesn't require too much thinking or stress ... but after graduation?


As an undergraduate at a decent London university I recall receiving a full local authority grant of approx £1,400pa in the 70s. It was enough then. After I graduated my starting salary was a littleF over £3,000 by comparison. Coupled with money I earned during the long university break periods through manual labour I did not need to be subsidised during my three years at university and my parents did not need to contribute money either. I did not work during term time. I studied. I graduated. I walked straight into a choice of good jobs with a modest degree. That was then.

So why would free state support not be enough now? In 2019 I believe some part-time employment during term time is beneficial to break up the study routines, but it shouldn't be totally essential to the viability of any undergraduate's economy.

I find your suggestion that living costs are impossible for a government and the taxpayer to fund to be nothing more than a function of your rigid personal politics - and that's a position to which I think you've been groomed. Not really your fault - if truth be told it is more the fault of my generation than yours because we sat on our hands instead of pushing to reform the system to cope fully and fairly with the inevitable higher demand on institutional infrastructures and services which is an inevitable requirement of a forward-looking completely established democratic country. I was going to say we were highly developed as a country. Yes we were. How about now?


Yes ten times more undergraduates do go to university now than in the 70s. In my book taxation should have been increased progressively to cope. Instead, in the UK, CEO pay relative to the lowest paid worker is perhaps the only financial parameter to have noticeably increased more than progressively, eh?
And university vice-chancellor pay? Scandalous would be a better word for those two phenomena. No country needs citizens as rich as that, and I am not sure what you have in mind when you talk about countries I am "idolising". I don't recognise the pattern of wealth distribution you attribute to them. So who do you mean?

So instead of more people being funded to get the best education, we let spivs, including university vice chancellors, plunder the country's wealth and to get away with levels of taxation levels on their ill gotten gains that have scarcely changed for decades.

We've actually had a discriminatory form of austerity budgeting against students ever since tuition fees were no longer free. That's since long before most graduates even knew the meaning of the word austerity.

My parents left school at 14 - the standard school leaving age at the time. After WW2 it was raised to 15. And whilst I was in the system it was raised to 16. Those who left at those ages became taxpayers at an early age. They had skin in the game. They wanted to see their taxes spent wisely on improving the country for all and for the most part until the 70s, they were.

We have had no further increase in school leaving age since 1972 apart from that wishy washy 2011 legislation that decrees that you have to stay in full time education until age 18 unless you go into an "apprenticeship" or some other training scheme. We all know how low wage national employers have abused the latter. The increase to age 15 school leaving age after WW2 had been delayed by the war, and to 16 in the 70s must surely have been delayed by incompetence or distractions, and ever since then, the rot has set in - terminally it seems, It is over 20 years since headlines reflected Tony Blair's 1997 mantra "Education Education Education" as national priorities 1,2 and 3.

When children are coerced into taking on loans bigger than a house that is child abuse.

If you can't see it you must have been groomed into either ignoring child abuse when it happened to your whole class when the loan scheme was presented ('normal' was it?), or into believing you achieved adulthood and therefore an ability to deal with all that goes with it before you even ceased being a minor?

Fact is, the UK's children are being conned right under the noses of their parents and grandparents, and their families are also being groomed to see it as normal and to let it happen in their name to their youngsters. Been there and done that myself.

By grooming our kids via their teachers and even MSE's Martin, HMG behaves worse than some RC priests, and some Premier League football scouts when it abuses entire generations via the mis-selling of huge loans to 16 and 17 year olds. I am sure the shareholders of parasite companies like Erudio certainly see the whole craic as better than sex, especially since they don't even have to emerge from the shadows to prey on young people - HMG obligingly brings them and sells them on to the privateers on a fairly regular basis when no-one is watching. How is that actually any better than Jersey childrens home residents being brought to Morning Cloud for a day out on the ocean waves and worse? Despite 6% plus loan interest rates, no harm comes to any young person in the making of those particular profits? Is that what we are supposed to swallow?

How can a 16 or 17 year old make decisions about being able to afford higher education costing £50,000 or more? Answer: they cannot - they have no money of their own and no experience to be able to make such a decision. The only decision they should be asked to make is whether they would like to go to university. Not "can you afford it?". And they should not be conned by words that imply that the loan scheme is a gift from the state.

Means testing children based on whether their parents are rich or poor is a sick joke. All should be treated equally. Rich parents can be taxed directly if any government had the balls. Their children should not be directly taxing their own parents. No right mind should be expecting any child to be treated any different to any other. "Rich" and "poor" when trying to describe a child trying to decide upon university in 2019 is largely meaningless exercise unless the agenda is to prolong the divide. Irrespective of their family background and wealth, undergraduates breath the same stale lecture theatre air and drink the same student union warm beer for most weeks of the year and are almost all poor if they are going to be harnessed to the loan scheme in any way whatsoever.

For a student to have to claim estrangement from a rich household in order to claim financial independence and receive equal entitlement to a full grant or full loan is another sick joke.

silvercar wrote: »

I think we are getting sidetracked. This thread is meant to discuss the proposed new design of student loan statements.

If you want to discuss government policy on student loans, the best place is on the “discussion time” board.

I disagree strongly. Burying the heart of the matter in DT and allowing this thread to stand unhindered by political criticism of the entire scheme would be just what supporters of this awful scheme would like.

This thread should be entitled "Student loans are dangerous & misleading – so check out MSE's campaign plan for scrapping them entirely and forcing the next government to forgive all existing outstanding loans, subsidise all future university education in the UK and cap student accommodation rents".

The draft statement design is mere tinkering and by MSE doing the tinkering, MSE are yet again allowing themselves to be used as a government PR machine to dress up something that would be illegal if it was offered by a commercial lender into something that looks more legal.

Applying an assumed 2.7% average salary increase over 30 years is simplistic in the extreme and actually looks like further grooming of young people not to expect too much.

We're in an age where 50 or more local councils are supposedly already making decisions about benefit claimants based on predictive algorithms applied to myriads of data collected from birth, so do we really think corralling the whole cohort of Plan 2 graduates into a single simplistic framework where 2.7%pa salary increase expectations are suggested as a personal thought experiment for all of them is going to be any sort of useful aid to planning their economies throughout any part of their working life?? What rot!

I get claustrophobia even beginning to contemplate such a low annual rate of salary increase especially for the early years of a new graduate's career.

I think it is just a way to try to further kid graduates that they'll never pay off these scandalously high rate loans in 30 years and that therefore one day, they can look back and say they have had a windfall courtesy of the scheme. In actual fact, serious students will easily pay off the loans but will incur disgraceful interest rates doing it. To the masses, Student Loans are sold as "never never" loans such that the interest rate is so high that you will remain a loan customer throughout (so forgeddabatit stupid), but in that respect Student Loans are little better than Wonga loans, except the interest rate is lower. But a *6.3%pa rate is still scandalous. It is over three times a typical 2019 mortgage rate, and the fact it is linked to uncertainty via RPI is also awful.

Instead, let's try a more personal thought experiment:

In my first ten years after graduation my salary increased by 400%. That's nearer +20%pa not +2.7%pa. I had a mediocre degree from a good university and at the end of 10 years I had done reasonably well but not so brilliantly because without a job change, I had shot my bolt by then with my first employer - if I had acquired an MBA, I could have expected to do as well again i.e. +20% for the next 10 years too. But in actual fact over the next ten I increased by at total of around 250%.

By the way, I was paying the lowest possible interest rates on a 100% mortgage at age 22. I wasn't special.
How many 2018/19 graduates will be able to say the same in 2020/21?

If by the time a new graduate starts paying their loan they are on a salary of £50,000pa and they manage to increase it by +20%pa, then they will pay off a £50,000 student loan in around 10 years at the current rate of interest (and they will have incurred around £20,000 of interest). Compare that to a £50,000 mortgage with the same payment regime, but at a 2% mortgage rate - that would be paid off a year earlier than the scandalous interest student loan for the same original borrowing, and with only £6,000 incurred in interest. These calculations both assume the threshold goes up by 2.7%pa (if we really want to put such an arbitrarily chosen figure to some use in this).

If the threshold does not increase, this particular lucky graduate chappie or chappess on £50K to start and achieving the sort of annual increases I did, will have paid even a bit more interest, but if they are a promising graduate in 2019 coughing up payments and interest like that on the scheme, what are the chances they will have been able to start a mortgage in their early working life like I did?

So someone please tell me - who is this new designed statement for? Shelf-stackers?

Edit1: I have just realised that the language in the draft statement has been neutered somewhat so that the word "interest" appears only once, and the word "loan" only twice in three pages. If that isn't a deliberately misleading thing to have done to a loan statement, I don't know what could be worse! And MSE have put their name to this??

*Edit2: Could someone remove the Quick link at the head of this thread that has 6.1% in the title. It is out of date and confusing.