It looks like these changes will be applied retrospectively, so anyone who started university after 2012 will pay back much more over their lifetime
My last payment is July, then I’m free and clear. I realise nobody else will care but I still wanted to say it out loud, as it were.
Of course it hits low earners harder. That’s the entire Tory plan. Cripple the poor’s mobility to force them to accept worse conditions. Keep them stupid so they’re easier to manipulate.
Genuinely feel betrayed by this government. I was told at the naive age of 17 that the only way to pull myself out of poverty is to go to university, get a degree and better myself.
Don’t worry about the £9k fees they said, only if you earn good money do you start paying it back, and only when you earn REALLY good money do you start paying significant amounts back.
Think hard about it though, because it is a contract after all and you will have to adhere to their terms.
What they didn’t tell me was that one side of the party can unilaterally and retrospectively change those terms at will, without any consultation with the other party, because it no longer suits them financially.
With Brexit, house prices, and now this, it feels like the country is turning on its young and it makes me so angry.
I have one Plan 1 loan and one Plan 2 loan (undergrad vs. PGCE). Even though my undergraduate degree was three years (no maintenance loan), it is still smaller than my PGCE loan because of the difference in interest. I might never pay my Plan 1 loan back but I am never going to make a dent in my Plan 2 loan. It’s absurd to see how much interest it has accumulated over the years and no wonder poorer students are hit so hard. It was designed to either put poorer people off uni or to saddle them with a tonne of debt if they did choose to go.
Never trust a Tory…
It turns out to be a truism beyond expectations.
Uni is becoming more like America, simply a way of essentially reopening the salt mines, get them paying for life with indentured servitude. Myself and other friends who skipped uni and started our own businesses or learnt a trade instead out earn the friends who got pointless degrees. An old friend became a doctor, and only makes a third of what I do now. I spend most of my time in one of my pubs now, just watching the money roll in.
To all the people who supported and defended this bullshit system, saying “it’s a graduate tax” and “it’s ok, I’ll just make sure to never earn more than 25k a year”, your stupidity has come home to roost. Congratulations.
Student Loans are just privatised taxation which could be replaced with exactly that: income tax. It would be progressive, kick in at the higher rates of earnings, be collected with a lot less bureaucracy, be harder to default on, be progressive, and so many other things. This is not going to happen because someone will announce that they do not want to pay for someone else’s education. Which is fine. Those someone elses should simply charge through the nose for whatever it is that they do. After all: can you make insulin? No. Well, I can – *admittedly it is poor quality and comes with a whole load of risks, but you cannot make it at all* – so I get to charge you an extortionate amount. It is not a matter of even saying *”well obviously science… …we can make exception for science …and doctors… …oh and engineers… …well yes I do not know how to edit film… …or…”* Reality is you pay the tax or you end up with a ~~Society~~ cess pit that rips you off.
I graduated in 2010. I am flabbergasted by my own luck right now. Flabbergasted and also pissed off on behalf of the people who graduated after me, who not only had to pay triple what I paid for the same education but will now be hit by retroactive changes they never agreed to.
Is there anything that can be done to try and change this? For example, if I write to my MP (Labour) is that likely to have any effect? I realise the answer is likely no, as it always is, but this infuriates me and I want to do something.
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It looks like these changes will be applied retrospectively, so anyone who started university after 2012 will pay back much more over their lifetime
My last payment is July, then I’m free and clear. I realise nobody else will care but I still wanted to say it out loud, as it were.
Of course it hits low earners harder. That’s the entire Tory plan. Cripple the poor’s mobility to force them to accept worse conditions. Keep them stupid so they’re easier to manipulate.
Genuinely feel betrayed by this government. I was told at the naive age of 17 that the only way to pull myself out of poverty is to go to university, get a degree and better myself.
Don’t worry about the £9k fees they said, only if you earn good money do you start paying it back, and only when you earn REALLY good money do you start paying significant amounts back.
Think hard about it though, because it is a contract after all and you will have to adhere to their terms.
What they didn’t tell me was that one side of the party can unilaterally and retrospectively change those terms at will, without any consultation with the other party, because it no longer suits them financially.
With Brexit, house prices, and now this, it feels like the country is turning on its young and it makes me so angry.
I have one Plan 1 loan and one Plan 2 loan (undergrad vs. PGCE). Even though my undergraduate degree was three years (no maintenance loan), it is still smaller than my PGCE loan because of the difference in interest. I might never pay my Plan 1 loan back but I am never going to make a dent in my Plan 2 loan. It’s absurd to see how much interest it has accumulated over the years and no wonder poorer students are hit so hard. It was designed to either put poorer people off uni or to saddle them with a tonne of debt if they did choose to go.
Never trust a Tory…
It turns out to be a truism beyond expectations.
Uni is becoming more like America, simply a way of essentially reopening the salt mines, get them paying for life with indentured servitude. Myself and other friends who skipped uni and started our own businesses or learnt a trade instead out earn the friends who got pointless degrees. An old friend became a doctor, and only makes a third of what I do now. I spend most of my time in one of my pubs now, just watching the money roll in.
To all the people who supported and defended this bullshit system, saying “it’s a graduate tax” and “it’s ok, I’ll just make sure to never earn more than 25k a year”, your stupidity has come home to roost. Congratulations.
Student Loans are just privatised taxation which could be replaced with exactly that: income tax. It would be progressive, kick in at the higher rates of earnings, be collected with a lot less bureaucracy, be harder to default on, be progressive, and so many other things. This is not going to happen because someone will announce that they do not want to pay for someone else’s education. Which is fine. Those someone elses should simply charge through the nose for whatever it is that they do. After all: can you make insulin? No. Well, I can – *admittedly it is poor quality and comes with a whole load of risks, but you cannot make it at all* – so I get to charge you an extortionate amount. It is not a matter of even saying *”well obviously science… …we can make exception for science …and doctors… …oh and engineers… …well yes I do not know how to edit film… …or…”* Reality is you pay the tax or you end up with a ~~Society~~ cess pit that rips you off.
I graduated in 2010. I am flabbergasted by my own luck right now. Flabbergasted and also pissed off on behalf of the people who graduated after me, who not only had to pay triple what I paid for the same education but will now be hit by retroactive changes they never agreed to.
Is there anything that can be done to try and change this? For example, if I write to my MP (Labour) is that likely to have any effect? I realise the answer is likely no, as it always is, but this infuriates me and I want to do something.