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Strangely (and probably contrary to what Mr Corbyn has in mind) the principle beneficiaries of this particular largesse will be those more well off. Richer students don't have loans and pay their fees upfront (so they will be better off with the abolition of tuition fees). Only those that achieve a decent standard of living actually repay their loans, so...
22:32 Mon 10th Jul 2017
Kim Jong Jezza has a magic money forest!
I'm starting to actually want Corbyn to win an election. People really do need to see what a fraud he is, and that's probably the only way it's going happen.
Surely the answer is in the fact that 2/3rds of graduates never earn a high enough wage to repay the debt? In my opinion this means the time spent at Uni is wasted in most cases.
When I left school in 1968,very few people went on to University, most got a job and carried on with 'on the job training' . This applied to those who went to Grammar School as well us those like me who went to a comprehensive .
Many went on apprenticeships or did as I did, I was employed but as a trainee , I had to work 4 days a week and attend day release and evening classes . I did it for 4 years to get an advanced City & Guilds Certificate as a Laboratory Technician , then my employer agreed to fund me for another 2 years to get a degree. By the age of 24 I had a degree ,6 years work expierience and money in the bank instead of a student debt. I was then offered a 3 year contract in Zambia working in the Copper mine Laboratories. At the end of the contract I got a £850 end of contract bonus ( a lot of money in the 1970s) and a free flight home. As the contract also offered free accommodation I managed to save some cash from my wages as well.
“I'm starting to actually want Corbyn to win an election. People really do need to see what a fraud he is, and that's probably the only way it's going happen.”

That’s quite so, Ludwig. The problem with Labour governments is that they don’t occur that frequently and for a very good reason. When they do materialise it is usually because they have garnered new support from (mainly) young people who have no idea what life is like with one in power. These youngsters use their new franchise to get out and vote for the people whom they believe will give them everything for nothing before they realise that in a few years’ time they will be among those paying heavily for the “free gifts”. An unfortunate side effect of that is that those of us who have been through it all before (and paid the price) have to endure it again.

“Surely the answer is in the fact that 2/3rds of graduates never earn a high enough wage to repay the debt? In my opinion this means the time spent at Uni is wasted in most cases.”

Absolutely spot on, Eddie. As I have explained before, only about 10% of jobs in the UK actually require education to degree level. I exclude from this the jobs where employers ask for a degree because they cannot rely on secondary education being sufficient to ensure their candidates can read and write. The 10% I speak of are jobs where the degree education is relevant to the work and necessary to embark on a career. With upwards of 50% of young people attending “university” four out of five of them will end up in jobs for which no degree is required and almost certainly in jobs in which their particular degree has no relevance whatsoever. For that they’ve accrued debts of around £27k or more.

Before a wholesale review of the grants and loans system is undertaken there needs to be an in-depth study of just what people attending the University of Neasden are actually getting for (usually other people’s) monney.
I'm sure there's some merit in your version of history NJ but perhaps the other reason is that the Tory party can't be in power indefinitely, or it just gets stagnant and complacent. The Labour Party is then useful to elect from time to time, if nothing else because they remind the Tories that they shouldn't take power for granted.

Also a lot of the most significant changes to our country are down to Labour. The NHS, the 1960s social reforms, etc etc.

I am amused reading this question and the answers. You are indignant that Corbyn plans to wipe the away the debts, and you seem to think the student loan scheme is good value for the country.

The truth is that under the Conservative Government's running of this scheme, that most of the £100billion in loans will be written off unpaid. The Conservatives will not admit that the loans will never be repaid in full, and they are pretending it is all working when it isn't. At least Corbyn has the honesrty to say end this farce and wrote off this money that everyone knows will never get anyway.

And the £100billion loans come from the Government, so we the country are borrowing that money ourselves to loan to the students. Presumably the Government is paying off its part of the loan, but not receiving anything like that figure in repayments from students. So it is us taxpayers who are funding this mess, and it isn't even working properly.


// Student loan debt rose £12.6bn, or 17 per cent, to £86.2bn in the past year //

// About 70 per cent of students who left university last year are expected never to finish repaying their loans, according to modelling carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Instead they will have to make repayments for 30 years before then having the unpaid loan written off. //

From the Financial Times.
What does 'Instead they will have to make repayments for 30 years before then having the unpaid loan written off' mean?
I daren't put an exact figure on it, but the repayment terms are such that anyone earning under £21k pays nothing (and if it stays that way then after 30 years they've still paid nothing), and anyone earning under about £30 for their entire career might expect to pay no more than £23,000 total, as compared with expected total loans of around twice that before interest. So many students will only end up paying back about half of their loan at most.

In a few minutes I can't be expected to give a more precise answer than that, but basically the point is that the repayment terms are usually not enough to recuperate the entire loan or even most of it, except for the exceptionally well-off. A great deal of student debt is uncollected.

Ah, I see. The FT article should have read 'Instead they will have to make repayments for 30 years before then having the (UNPAID PORTION OF THE) unpaid loan written off
// That’s quite so, Ludwig. The problem with Labour governments is that they don’t occur that frequently and for a very good reason //

It's a classic catch 22 NJ :-
Q - How do we get rid of Corbyn so he can't get into power and chuff everything up?
A - Put him into power and let him chuff everything up.
Perhaps that didn't actually answer your question, so let me also add that all student loans are written off, no matter the outstanding amount, after somewhere between 20 and 35 years depending on which country of the UK you're from and when you were at university. For myself, for example, I entered a university from England in 2008, so I will pay back for 20 years following graduation in 2013, assuming I earn more than £17,775. Which, as a PhD student, I don't. So I'll only end up paying off the loan for at most 16 years, and in 2033 the rest should be written off. Meanwhile I've been accruing interest at a rate of 1.25%, so the amount I "have" to repay has been rising steadily. Obviously I've no intention of telling you how much that is but the main point is that unless I earn something like £100k annually then I don't think I'd ever repay the full amount.

Alternatively, my brother, who started after 2012, will only repay once his income goes above £21,000, but picks up far more interest (current I think it's about 5% = inflation + 3, but I'm not sure how it's calculated), has a higher total loan to repay, and could expect to be repaying for up 30 years, ie until 2047. Again, I'm not going to share more than that information for obvious reasons, although I will say that he's rather a lot more hacked off about all this than I am.

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