Who said anything about it being "better"?
Do you also raise your fingers to do "this" when you're talking? 😆
I had a student that did this and I kept threatening to cut his ruddy fingers off...

Well the "positive forward step" implies that you think that this would be an improvement. Another word for that is better. I included the quotation marks to reinforce the fact that I didn't agree with you.

Just noticed this on wikipedia

In January 2012, BBC Newsnight revealed that Ed Lester, the head of the SLC, was being paid his salary via a private firm, allowing him to reduce his payment of income tax and national insurance contributions. It was subsequently announced that he would be treated as a regular employee in the future.

So, if you're finding the decision to pay back the loans or not a moral conundrum, look to your elders for guidance.

That Wikipedia quote is pretty funny.

It's just a matter of bureaucracy for me as I am perfectly within my rights not to pay. In this particular year there is a long and boring issue surrounding payslips, obtaining paper copies of them and explaining to the SLC that the one high payslip does in fact have over a year of vacation pay on it, and is not a normal payslip (BC has a different way of dealing with vacation than the UK).

As for morals, well, here goes 😉

I've worked since I was 13. Never claimed benefits, yet paid a stupid amount of money into the welfare system which is exploited to hell. I've paid plenty of cash into the NHS so people can drink, smoke and be lazy, paid into a pension system that I'll never claim from and paid a shitload of wonga into the armed forces so politicians can blow people up for oil. So Great Britain, if I had the three grand lying about, I'd buy return flights to the UK with it and get a holiday out of it. With any remaining notes, I'd go to the nearest Government office, put the notes into a nice pile, and set it on fire.

I'm disgusted by the OP's attitude, as someone who had to live on a grant with extra money for being in London, who had no fees to pay and who also got housing benefit and has never had to pay anything back other than through normal taxation and ended 3 years with more money in my bank account than I started with I find this attitude objectionable.

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?

get a job in this day that doesn't need A levels at least, grade inflation for you.

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

But seeing as so many graduates don't make much extra from having the degree do we really want to fund them? How many do we really need?

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

(The very fact that education isn't VAT-rated is an effective 20% subsidy anyway).

hi there, i'm a journalist for a national British newspaper looking into the rising phenomenon of british graduates who head abroad and leave their student debts behind. would anyone (@walleater, @taff - the friends you mention) be willing to talk to me about it? anonymity ensured if you don't want to be named.

sure you are mr student loans debt collector 😀

And not even a photo of her delicious self in her profile to tempt them further 🙂

Bring back elitist education!

Sending 50% of the population to university when only 20% actually need / benefit from a degree level qualification is just plane stupid and very expensive.

NB As for the OP, doesn't bother me at all, if he doesn't earn enough, it makes no difference which country he's in....

http://www.journalism.co.uk/freelancers/2833

http://lucyosfisher.wordpress.com/about/

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/lucy-fisher/55/321/902

Ooh, a first from Cambridge, fancy 🙂

[i]plane stupid [/i]

[b]plain[/b] stupid 🙂

I tried paying back my student loan a couple of months ago all in one go, just to get rid of it. The woman on the phone said she couldn't possibly let me do that, the only way I could pay them back was by sending them proof of earnings.

"No, no." I said, "Surely you don't need my salary, I want to give you money right now."

She laughed and said, as if talking to a simple child, "No, it doesn't work like that. You have to fill out the form. You agreed to that in the conditions of the loan." She may be correct. I left university in 2002 and I somehow forgot the contents of the small print.

So, I had my contract translated into English and sent it off with the completed form. So far I haven't heard a peep.

I guess it's possible that, in actual fact, there are many people out there like me and the problem is not that people are refusing to repay their loans but instead that the SLC is too incompetent to collect it.

I fish 😀

I like that ^

BruceWee - pretty sure my wife just phoned up and paid hers off in a lump sum last year. Takes a month or two for them to stop taking it from your PAYE (if they are) due to going through HMRC iirc... and you then have to claim the overpayment back.

the problem is not that people are refusing to repay their loans but instead that the SLC is too incompetent to collect it

knowing the UK, this is extremely likely

in the same boat

still have my student debt

18 years later

My senior tutor was an alcoholic (came into lectures drunk many a time...) and the course was largely a waste of time.

Yeah, you turned up, so you did your bit.

I guess it's possible that, in actual fact, there are many people out there like me and the problem is not that people are refusing to repay their loans but instead that the SLC is too incompetent to collect it.

They wrote me their usual aggressive letter back in August stating that if I don't send proof of earnings they'll charge mr the standard repayment of £249/m. Fine, I thought, seeing as they were slugging me £330...

Fast forward a few months, and I get another letter saying that as I would have seen from the repayment schedule they sent in September (they didn't), they were due to take collections from my account starting October. However, apparently they had a technical glitch and couldn't collect the direct debit. They apologised for any convenience, and want me to call them to arrange payment

I doubt I'll be calling them. Any company that has a signed direct debit mandate, and spend most of their lives ****ing up or sending threatening letters can either take the money or not. I don't care, but as it earns far more in interest here than I'm being charged by the slc, so I'm happy to keep my cash if they can't be bothered to take it

Fine, I thought, seeing as they were slugging me £330...

😯

How much do you earn?!?!?

Dont answer that....

Just saw this. ROFLOL.

My conscience is pretty clean to be honest.

Its about the only thing about you that is clean, you dirty boy. I paid mine back 3 years after finishing Uni cuz Im dead clever at like jobs n'that. You earn nothing cuz u iz a joey and a rubbish mechanic.

and hes naughty with his pets. see FB.L 8OIKE

Unviersity is not about earning more money.

Universities are primarily research institutions which also offer teaching.

I work in a private company where we sift through this freely available research and build some pretty "cutting edge" stuff out of it. A 17 billion dollar company has just bought as out. The people doing the research, and implementing its findings, are never the people that earn lots of money, thats usually the people in sales or management.

This is just the way the world works. This does not mean we can get rid of the research side and just built a world full of sales people and managers because they earn more money!

IMO R&D is the very definition of wealth creation, new technologies and industries are created that didn't exist before.

HH - please tell Camoron this. That way there might at some point be a job for me back in the UK.

(You could also tell Gillard this so in the mean time I might still have a job here)