Well I got various stories that I’d never tell the grandchildren out of it….

I have a mahoosive student debt (probably about 3x the norm!!)

I have 2 more years at university then I am moving abroad to earn shed loads.
I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of paying my student loan back mostly because education should be free as previously stated but also because the government have failed me so very often so its my reward for having to put up with them 😉

Student loans are not real loans, its only the bitter old people who seem to have some moral obligation to pay back a loan that should never be needed to take out in the first place.

Don’t hate the player hate the game 😉

I didn’t get any parental assistance. I worked to pay my way through my engineering degree and I was to skint or busy studying to bother with partying. Probably why I have no contact with anyone from my uni days now. I took out the loans and put them in a Tessa. When I graduated, I paid them back and used the money I made on them to pay off the student overdraft. That was 2001. It looks like this year I might just get to the point where I would have to start paying back. From reading this thread it sounds like I should have just sat on the money.

Student loans are not real loans, its only the bitter old people who seem to have some moral obligation to pay back a loan that should never be needed to take out in the first place.

Best of luck when you grow up and join the real world with that attitude.

I started Uni in 2001. I started working when I was 16 (work during holidays etc) and still needed the loan.
There hasn’t been a single month I haven’t paid something back since October 2004.
I have to pay 15% of my earnings over £15,000 PA. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it doesn’t matter as it is taken out with my tax and NI so I don’t notice it going.
And I don’t begrudge it going out either. I racked up the debt (and before people say anything, I was tea-total for 2 years at Uni) so I will pay it back. That is the AGREEMENT I made and the RESPONSIBILITY I have as a mature adult.
I would love to turn around and say ‘you know what, things are a bit tight, so I’m not going to pay it off’ but I won’t.

I guess I must have been brought up proper or something….

Pik n Mix

just because you can dont make it right

Well worth getting a degree if you are still earning sod all after all thia time then

Do you have a degree?

I moved abroad and I paid off the rest of it…although I have to admit I didn’t have a huge loan to start and had paid off most of it by the time I buggered off

Education should be free.

There is no such thing as free education. Seems more than fair that people who earn more and directly benefitted from the education should pay the most for it.

And I don’t begrudge it going out either. I racked up the debt (and before people say anything, I was tea-total for 2 years at Uni) so I will pay it back. That is the AGREEMENT I made and the RESPONSIBILITY I have as a mature adult.
I would love to turn around and say ‘you know what, things are a bit tight, so I’m not going to pay it off’ but I won’t.

I guess I must have been brought up proper or something….
I finished paying off my loan last month, all 13k of it. I begrudge them every single penny.

Education should me free and the people that stopped it being so are a bunch of hypocritical liars.

It is fundamentally wrong that we send the youth of our country into the adult world with debts of over £40,000. It is inter-generational thievery pure and simple.

Moving from 10% to a goal of 50% of the population going to study in further education was always going to have a sting in the tail – got to be paid for somehow. England has gone big on fees, Scots paying for it some other way. Having said that what is the Scottish parliament not prioritising to pay for the lack of tuition fees? Never got that bit – or is it a barnett formula “luxury”?

The only benefit I can see to the students paying for their education in a very visible way is I think it is making for a far more discerning student. The sixth formers I help with UCAS applications are choosing courses with far more care and the ones that come back and tell us what they are up to have far more tails of students being proactive about keeping their universities to account to the value for money of their courses.

Have a look at an expat forum, much more use for this stuff.

Long and short of it. They can’t issue a CCJ against a non resident.

As for paying it off tell them you don’t earn any money and have left the country.

If education should be free who is going to pay for the lecturers?

About two years ago I got a letter asking me to provide details of my income or they would charge me the maximum rate each month to pay it back. I decided I wouldn’t mind paying the maximum amount so I didn’t bother replying and waited for the first repayment request.

Still waiting.

If education should be free who is going to pay for the lecturers?

That’d be everyone, wouldn’t it? But only because the country as a whole benefits, innit?

When I graduated and started earning above the threshold I waited for about 3 months expecting payments to start coming out. Nothing, so I did the stupid thing and called them because I was young and needlessly worried that I could get in trouble.

I explained the situation and the pleb on the phone said ” It’s due to start coming out shortly, we have all you details, there might just be a backlog”. Waited a further 12 months with still nothing coming out of my earnings for SL. So, contacted them again and got told exactly the same thing.

I was getting three-monthy statements and watching the interest accumulate on my loan with not a penny being paid off it and quickly decided to just forget about it. They know where I am, they know that I am earning above the threshold (because I told them).

10 years later still not a penny has been taken off me. So sod it. They can bury me with my last statement for all I care.

NZCol – Member
Best of luck when you grow up and join the real world with that attitude.

I was working for over a decade before I decided to go back to uni, in that decade I got promotion over promotion so it didn’t hinder me too much 😉

Pawsy_Bear – Member

Pik n Mix

just because you can dont make it right

Nope and I never claimed it did, I will however be about 40k better off, and out of this sh1te ridden country for good 🙂

now to go about my day, I think jezza is on in a min and then I mightthink about getting dressed.

don simon – Member

If education should be free who is going to pay for the lecturers?

That’d be everyone, wouldn’t it? But only because the country as a whole benefits, innit?

Socialism – no thanks

If education should be free who is going to pay for the lecturers?

Socialism – no thanks

shall we scrap the NHS, the police, the schools, etc

If you need it you can pay for it.

Or maybe we have a society that decided that sometimes for the greater good it makes sense for things to be free at the point of delivery. That somethings aren’t easily valued so are difficult to charge for.

Pik n Mix – not convinced we are going to miss you tbh 🙂

What country has got the pleasure of your company next?

shall we scrap the NHS, the police, the schools, etc

Agreed, I wouldn’t scrap the police.

walleater, is it the Student Loans Company who you are paying?
they are notoriously bad at administering their loans. I had no end of problems with them deferring my loan before I earned enough, then deferring it again when I was unemployed – they threatened me with debt collectors and everything. Idiots.
I think you have two options: follow their requests to the letter, or just ignore them forever.
at uni, I had a job, a loan, a big overdraft, parental help, sponsorship and a scholarship… and I royally pissed it all up the wall. 😀 but I paid my debt.

convert – Member

Pik n Mix – not convinced we are going to miss you tbh

You don’t even know me so why would I care if some plebs will miss me or not?

ooooooooo 9.35 think its time for a little nap.

While I also think higher education should be basically subsidized I also think if you get into a situation knowingly borrowing money then you are morally obligated to pay it back. Irrespective of the country you live in. You could apply your flawed argument to almost all public services. But then everybody wants more for less, even if they ave agreed to it.

You don’t even know me so why would I care if some plebs will miss me or not?

The tragedy would be if no one else wanted you either and we were stuck with you AND you ended up having to pay it back – a lose, lose scenario I think you would agree!

Convert me old fruit a tragedy would be your whole family dying in a plane crash (which may I add I hope never happens), the situation you have described is just unfortunate, with the skill set im developing at university, the quality of the university I go to and the massive shortage of skilled workers in my industry, its a scenario that will never happen 😉

besides you wouldn’t be stuck with me, you don’t know me 😉
still wouldn’t pay back my loan though 😉

If education should be free who is going to pay for the lecturers?

That’d be everyone, wouldn’t it? But only because the country as a whole benefits, innit?
Yes and no – there’s a vast chunk of spending that is a subsidy to well-educated middle class kids who would have gone to uni anyway. That money would be better spent (would have greater social impact and reduce social costs) on targeting those who achieve least in education.

No problem subsidizing those who wouldn’t be able to afford to go to Uni.

Yes and no – there’s a vast chunk of spending that is a subsidy to well-educated middle class kids who would have gone to uni anyway.

Why should the background of a persons parents dictate whether or not they are funded through higher education?

Why should the background of a persons parents dictate whether or not they are funded through higher education?

Because money’s tight and needs to be spent where it will have the most impact. Subsidising kids that would go anyway should be a low priority.

Because money’s tight and needs to be spent where it will have the most impact. Subsidising kids that would go anyway should be a low priority.

Probably a good idea to stop spending on health care for the elderly then isn’t it. Afterall they are going to die soon and it would have a much greater impact if it were focused on those of working age.

Probably a good idea to stop spending on health care for the elderly then isn’t it. Afterall they are going to die soon and it would have a much greater impact if it were focused on those of working age.

Your analogy is the wrong way around: prioritising spending on middle class prospective uni students who have got decent secondary school results is like prioritising spending on middle-aged healthy people instead of the sick with expensive problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/magazine/what-can-mississippis-health-care-system-learn-from-iran.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_gawande

education should be free

It is from the age of 5 right up to your leaving school at 16-17. If an individual then decides they want to go to college/university presumably to enhance their own chances of getting a higher paid position then why should the rest of us finance that?

…their own chances of getting a higher paid position then why should the rest of us finance that?

Because the wealth that is generated by said graduate is of beneift to everyone, not just the graduates. It really bugged me when the tuition fees were being introduced. Economics was being (mis)used to highlight the cost of the education and the benefit to the individual but at no point was there the slightest recognition of the economic benefit to the country as a whole.

Education is free in Norway and Germany IIRC?

Doesn’t seem to do them any harm…while we turn into mini-USA.

Because the wealth that is generated by said graduate is of beneift to everyone

Not in the OP’s case though he’s already stated that he has no intention of returning to the UK!

Not in the OP’s case though he’s already stated that he has no intention of returning to the UK!

No but I was refering to graduates in general, as I’m sure you were aware.

Purely on the point of Parental Income:

It has always irritated me that this is one of the markers used to asses student funding. What if the parents choose not to help their kids out with funding for University? Those people have to self fund without the same help.

FWIW I was lucky enough to be at University just when they started to end the student grants, I received about £1K per year in grant and took student loans out of about £2500 per year.

I’m on the old system, and have never earned enough to pay back, de[pending on what sector you work in and which part of the country there’s plenty of reasonably paid jobs that would mean that you’d never end up paying it back.

The Student Loan Company administer it, but the debt has now been sold onto some company in Wales who I hear from occasionally…

No it would be better if we were in a mini USA system as many better colleges charge little or no fees for disadvantaged students!

In some ways the US system is fairer as there’s no minimum or maximum fee, but then they kind of understand how a freemarket works in education…

I can see wealthy parents paying for their own and some kind of scholarship system, for the less well off yet gifted child, as being a positive step forward.

I can see wealthy parents paying for their own and some kind of scholarship system, for the less well off yet gifted child, as being a positive step forward.

For the life of me I can’t see why this is seen as “better” than letting everyone who has earned a place in further education from going there. Granted I’d probably mean fewer places but then that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.