I graduated 10 years ago. I now owe more than when I left despite paying it off for 9 of those years.
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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How's that possible? Genuinely wondering, I'm from a country with free uni which is still cheap ish if you don't qualify for free for some reason. I understand the concepts of tuition and loans, I'm just wondering how the loan ends up so far underwater if you've been paying.
Once upon a time university fees were fairly ok. Most people would leave uni with under 10k of debt and have it paid off within 10 to 15 years or so depending on wage.
Then the liar that is Nick Clegg came along and instead of scrapping fees, tripled them along with his lord boss David Cameron.
And for some reason I decided to go to university that year, 10 years after I should have (I skipped it in favour of a job when I was that age but decided to retrain).
Left with £30k debt, paid off 2k due to a redundancy grant from my work, and now owe ££37k. I don’t see the point of it coming out of my pay packet to be honest.
The university got a load of new buildings though
// edited with correct figures. Just looked them up.
Damn. Does the debt get erased eventually?
Eventually yeah I think written off in your 50s perhaps.
Which doesn’t make sense to me either from the debt giver point of view. Not had enough time to pay it off even with a high paying job.
Would love to know the thinking and rationale behind it all and the figures. I know some people that went back and did a masters or two and have student debt almost as £80k. They figure they’re never paying it off so why not 🤷
Repayments are 9% of your salary above £26k. If that's less than interest (inflation +3%!) then it goes up.
It gets written off at 50 something (... probably)
Could someone explain how this happens?
It was my general understanding - albeit as an American - that university costs were virtually close to nothing outside of a few exceptions. Have the costs risen that much over the last 15-20 years to create this level of debt?
Most of the Brits I interact with have always pumped up the education system as being so much cheaper than that in US, but there’s a chance that those comprised of mostly older Gen X who graduated 30 years ago without noting recent changes, but this news is very surprising to me. £53K in debt is nearing the same amount that the average millennial had at graduation as well.
People will blame Nick Cleggs Lib Dems for this and yeah they play a big part in this, but the root cause is further back.
Tony Blair removed the cap on the number of students who could go to university which lead to introducing tuition fees. Before then you used to get a grant, I got three grand a year, to go to university.
Suddenly universities could massively increase the number places so they did. This lead to spiralling costs, which lead to fees going up and loans had to go up to cover this. They also borrowed heavily to expand.
David Cameron removed the cap on fees while increasing the money students could borrow with Cleggs backing (against a key Lib Dem manifesto pledge fucking the Lib Dems for years after) and Universities started getting properly greedy.
Inflation kicked in but the loans available to students didn't because the government couldn't afford to, majority of students never pay back the full amount before its written off. Student loan book is set to be a trillion pounds in about 20 years.
The whole situation is fucked because Blair said anyone could go, rather than being honest about what we could afford to pay for. Now we have a ticking timebomb that someone's going to have to pay.
The lib Dems and Tories decided to fuck over our youth back in the early 2010s
Lib Dems campaigned on a promise of free uni (it had gotten to about £3k a year at the time, up from the less than £1k a year the previous generation had got) then did the exact opposite and tripled the price when awarded the power to do something about it.
I can't bring myself to ever trust a word they say again. And anyone that says the Tories stopped them, they were the only thing keeping the Tories in power, they were a VoNC away from potentially preventing 15 years of Tory kleptocracy and all the damage they caused (and that's without going into how those Tory governments repeatedly normalised increasingly far-right positions)
At best they're entirely useless at worst they're just another shade of Tory
Lib Dems campaigned on a promise of free uni … then did the exact opposite and tripled the price when awarded the power to do something about it.
Un-freaking-believable…
I’ve always known the Tories were trash, but I had no idea that there was a whole extra party that were just as bad. Crimony…
The Lib Dems really aren't just as bad, they're actually one of the better major parties. Unfortunately they made a deal with the devil to get a chance at power and the Tories completely fucked them over. That said, Clegg (their leader at the time) then left politics to work for Facebook so maybe he was a bastard all along!
They did it to get a referendum on a new voting method. They chose a shit one no one wanted though
Free uni was abolished over a decade ago
I still remember those protests. They are trying to do the same to the NHS too. Americanize everything.
Also to be clear, this is more like a graduate tax than a loan.
You pay back 9% of whatever your earn over £26k and whatever you owe is written off when you are 50 something. It doesn't count on credit reports etc.
It's not great though as high earners end up paying way less over their life as they pay it off early.
Scotland still has free tuition if your brit friends are scottish