As someone who receives close to the maximum student loan from the government each year, I try my best not to think too hard about the crushing financial burden I am going to carry into my postgrad years. After all, for those of us who need a degree to enter their field of employment and don’t have the family finances to sail us through, it doesn’t matter how unfair the system becomes: student loans are a trap we have little choice but to fall into.
Ignoring the problem has, however, become impossible over the past week, as a public spat between the financial adviser Martin Lewis and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over a hidden detail in November’s budget kicked off a fierce debate about the fairness of our student loans system. Almost 6 million people on plan 2 loans, which were taken out by students from England who started university between September 2012 and July 2023, and students from Wales who have started since September 2012, will now be facing higher repayments after Reeves took the decision to freeze the salary threshold until 2030.
The change has tapped into a mounting frustration that it is those already struggling who end up footing the bill, while those with the broadest shoulders waltz away scot-free. The myth that was constantly drilled into me growing up – that anything is possible if you work hard enough – once again finds itself faced with the ugly realities of modern Britain.
It’s not as if students were lacking bad news before this; thanks to AI, entry-level job opportunities are rapidly disappearing, with hundreds of applicants for a single role now commonplace. Annual increases in England in tuition fees in line with inflation, along with soaring rents across major cities, are already stacking up the immediate costs of university.
For young people, the decision of whether to go to university has in large part been influenced by three factors: the upfront costs, the long-term burden and future job opportunities. The UK is reaching a point of no return in all three respects. When friends complain about rent swallowing their student loans or being forced to choose between attending lectures and clocking into work, who can say with any confidence this situation is temporary, or that it will be worth it in the end?
Those in power like to claim that this is just a small change, and that they’ve been left with no other choice. But the reality is we’ve been facing deteriorating terms and conditions ever since the introduction of tuition fees in 1998. Now, every time the government makes the system worse for students, we can’t help but wonder: what’s coming next?
Lewis rightly observes the current changes to loan repayments are “not moral”, but he remains under the misguided assumption that this government is remotely interested in morality at all. Only six years ago, Keir Starmer himself proclaimed that he would “end the national scandal of spiralling student debt and abolish tuition fees”, while Reeves sat for three years as shadow chancellor of an opposition whose official policy was the abolition of tuition fees. Today not only does this government not support abolition, not only has it made the system harsher for students and graduates than it was under the Tories, but it now has the audacity to proclaim it was “fair and reasonable” all along.
The reality is that rather than being treated like the future of the country’s economic growth and social development, students have long been regarded as bottom of the priority list by successive governments of all stripes. They are terrified of taking a swipe at pensioners, who can be relied upon to make their displeasure felt at the ballot box, and so view young people as easy pickings when it comes to budgets. Britain is not alone in this generational warfare. In France last year, there was a period in which the average pensioner was earning more than the average person in full-time employment. As countries across the western world age, governments are increasingly ignoring the collapsing conditions for their young people, further alienating them from the political system. And although this is certainly bad news for young people, in the long term it’s going to hurt everybody else as well – a society that refuses to invest in its future is a society creating the conditions for its own decline.
Once upon a time, Labour may have been able to brush the matter under the rug, relying on the fact that young people had nowhere else to go. However, the rise of parties to its left should give it reason for pause. The upcoming byelection in Gorton and Denton, an area seen as one of Labour’s heartlands, now has the Greens (and not Reform UK) as the bookies’ favourites, propelled by a notable percentage of disaffected graduates and students. Last November, as Reeves publicised her new attacks on students and graduates, the Young Greens announced that they had become the largest youth and student wing of any party in the UK, taking the crown from Young Labour, which has seen membership fall consistently since the Corbyn years. Some might hope that a defeat to the Greens, who oppose tuition fees, could send a message to Westminster and help encourage a U-turn on government policy. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this Labour government, it’s that they’re not particularly fond of listening.
