Putting the financial world to rights with MrsPhiiiiil (it’s all go in this household on a Monday night!) made me wonder how long the “average” student loan takes to repay.

There are a load of people who pay them back off fairly quickly, others who go for yeeeeeears without paying off a penny watching it get bigger, and all the people in the middle who pay them off slowly but surely… but how big are these groups? Is there a funky graph somewhere out there showing what proportion of people have repaid their loans after x years?

Inquiring minds would like to know (well, I would, the Mrs thinks I’m boring for wondering about it).

graduated … 11 years ago, owing around £13k

i’ve been out of work for some extended periods, during which times the (small) interest ate into the small dent i’d made.

but, i’ve been making all the payments required for 7 years, and my debt is now down to £8700.

i earn almost exactly the national average. the repayments are small, and i’ve never had a pay-cheque that didn’t have the small deduction.

i won’t be surprised if i still have outstanding debt when i’m 65*, at which point it’s cancelled. (i think? – the debt cancellation threshold has changed a bit over the years)

(*the interest rate will only go up, my pay is going nowhere, and it’s only a matter of time before i find another P45 in the post)

Considering the minute interest they hardly get bigger and bigger, they increase very marginally, not really a crippling debt!

No idea about your question though! I ought to pay mine off after about 7 years if that makes a difference!

Is it for a totally new loan? I might be able to turn up some info on the previous style (plan 1), seems like the sort of thing we should have at work but there’s no data for the new type, too new- first loans were taken out in 2012. (though, the forecast is that only 60% of students will ever repay it! So I suppose the average repayment lifespan is going to be somewhere in the high 20s)

There’s a lot of data on the SLC website if you can be bothered to dig through it: http://www.slc.co.uk/statistics/national-statistics/newnationalstatistics2.aspx

Tbh old ones , fine , wouldnt like a new style base rate tracker loan.

Paid mine off in a year- combo of low loans and decent wages.

Glad to be rid of it tbh , those feckers would change the goalposts in a heart beat given a change in the direction of the wind.

Averages will be high and largely irrelevant. Doctors and lawyers will pay it off pretty quickly, plenty drama students will never pay a penny, lots somewhere in the middle. Huge difference in debt level at graduation too.

Those SLC documents contain an awful lot of numbers but none that I can find that look particularly relevant, unfortunately. Unless I just fell asleep by that point… 🙂

I was mainly thinking about the old-ish ones from about 1999 or so as that’s what we and most of our friends have or had.

I did find an interesting article about treating the new ones as an increase in your income tax rather than a loan, which sounds an interesting idea; you’ll never repay it all (unless you earn enough to not care anyway) in the same way you’ll never pay off all your other taxes but you just pay a little bit more every month until it gets written off after 30 years or however long it is.

To many variables (amount of debt, how much you earn, years spent abroad after graduating) to make any average meaningful, IMO.

If you’ve got an ‘old style’ loan (1.5% apr) I’d expect an average earner to be chomping thru it pretty rapidly. The interest on my debt was £55 last year!

was the first one in 97? I reckon that you wont get that many meaningful stats out of it for the various reasons above and add in too short a time frame for some of the low earners/no hopers

The rate of pay off for the income tax deducted ones might be able to be extrapolated though.

I graduated in 2000 owing around £8500. I’ve never earned over the threshold since (sadly) so have not had to start paying it back.

I got one the first year they came in, which was my final year. Think I borrowed £800 ish and paid it back over about 4 years IIRC.

trail_rat – Member
Tbh old ones , fine , wouldnt like a new style base rate tracker loan.

Paid mine off in a year- combo of low loans and decent wages.

Glad to be rid of it tbh , those feckers would change the goalposts in a heart beat given a change in the direction of the wind.
So if you wouldn’t get a loan how will you go to Uni ?

I doubt you’d pay off the £27k (tuition fees only) to £50k you’d owe these days in a year

OP stats for old loans won’t tell you much about repayment behaviour for the current loans which are far far larger.

Graduated this year, just got first wages. It’s going to be a while is the best stat I can give right now!

Graduated 2005, barely paid a penny since. (Questions wisdom of further education….)

I’m starting to wonder if I ever will.

Looks like i forgot to mention im in and went to uni in scotland and finished up in 2008 , even missed the graduate endowment fee bullshit they intriduced where by you basically paid back a chunk of your tuition if you graduated. Personally feel it should have been the wasters that wasted the unis time that should have been made to pay- but then that would be impractical and unworkable.

I diidnt say i wouldnt take a loan i said i wouldnt like. As you point out they have you over a barrel

jambalaya – Member

So if you wouldn’t get a loan how will you go to Uni ?

Just be scottish, easy!

I just pay it back under paye. Under £10k but at 1% its not worth paying over that!!

Better off putting the money in a savings account…. Even a shit one at 2%

Paying mine since 2008, got £13.8k left to pay. 😯 What I’d be interested to know is how in 2010 I had only £80 of interest for the year, yet last year it was £200 on a smaller total. Have they changed the rules, because as far as I know the interest rate has stayed steady… ❓

Graduated in 2001 owing somewhere in the region of £12k, and didn’t pay a penny until 2010. Cleared the balance last month. It feels good.

I paid mine off each year through uni so when I finished there wasn’t anything to pay.

graduated in 2008 with 3 years worth non means tested (£9k ?)
Been paying it off ever since
should be done in about march (ie 4.5 years)

I remember mine was at 0% for a few years until they decided to change how they calculated the interest rate. When I took mine it was at some figure below the base rate. When that fell through the floor they changed it to base rate plus X.

FWIW I graduated in 2001, started paying back in 2004, had a payment “holiday” (ahem) in 2009 and still have a few years to go. So I recon it’d be around 10-12 years to pay back for me.

What’s the point in paying it back quickly though?

was the first one in 97

1990 / 1991 I think – they came in during my first year but the amount loaned was pretty small, around £600/year as grants were still available and fees were something you didn’t even need to think about. The loan was in lieu of an uplift in grant and the loan amount grew yearly while the grant amount was frozen.

I didn’t claim a loan in the first year. I’d filled my my head with pessimistic nonsense that it would somehow be the thin end of a wedge and that one day in the dim and dark future there’d be no grants or fees assistance at all.

Its funny how you learn later that you were living in a golden age.

Started in ’92 and started with the student loans then. Took one out every year until graduation in ’96 as I had a succession of rubbish placements and had no cash. As these were the old one, I had a year’s grace, then paid them off over four or five years.

I can’t remember how much I ended up borrowing total, but it was no way like the amount kids these days will look forward to.

Graduated 2008 oweing £19k, will probably pay it off next year I think (haven’t checked my statements for a while, but back of an envelope says I will).

[edit] i was in the annoyingly average middle, if my parents earnt less I’d have got a proportion paid as a grant, if they’d earnt more the loan would be less and they’d be expected to contribute. So being on the broderline (litteraly, I got something like £11 grant in the first year, and aboutt he same off in the last year means tested) means I ended up oweing the max! Not that I thought the system was stupid or anything.

graduated in 2008, not sure how much I owe, as I changed address, and haven’t bothered telling them. I owed 14k, so it will be a long time yet…

1990 / 1991 I think – they came in during my first year but the amount loaned was pretty small, around £600/year as grants were still available and fees were something you didn’t even need to think about. The loan was in lieu of an uplift in grant and the loan amount grew yearly while the grant amount was frozen.

Seem about right I was at Uni 89-91 and think they appeared just before my final year….

Graduated in 2003 owing about £12k.
Been in pretty much continuous employment ever since.
Now owe £13.5k down to rubbish wages. Interest currently outstripping repayments by about £12/month, not increasing rapidly but no sign of it going away.

£19k over 6 years is pretty good going!

I agree with some of the sentiment on here that it’s a pain seeing the money going out on your payslip, but really it’s the last debt you should pay off since it’s at such a low rate of interest. I’d be banging the extra off my credit card or mortgage as they’re the debts that are accruing the most interest.

Veedubba – thats fine logic but they were helping them selves to huge chunks of my bonus…….

Hence why its gone. It was sole destroying doing a month in nigeria for them to take a very very nice singlespeed bike out my wage.

Still they cant do it any more.

The new ones you cant pay back in a lump sum I dont think. My £1800 from 1995 took till about 2003 to pay off. I did do a masters and phd combined with a few years low paid dossing round the world before I got a proper job though.

Hence why its gone. It was sole destroying doing a month in nigeria for them to take a very very nice singlespeed bike out my wage.

I had that for 18 months in Middlesbrough!

Seems that there’s a lot on here that swallowed the New Labour further education scam. 50% to University destroyed the value and credibility of degrees. I was a student in the early nineties and went back as a mature student a couple of years ago and the calibre of a lot of the students and the teaching was unbelievably low second time around (it wasn’t great the first time). The biggest suckers are the guys paying £30k for a degree now which is going to earn them less than the bricklayer/plumber/heating engineer that started work at 16. Factor that in with a mortgage at five times their salary (and that’s the ones who’s parents can stump up a £30k deposit for them) and a lot of people are going to be in a lot of debt for most of their lives.

Seems that there’s a lot on here that swallowed the New Labour further education scam.

Not sure why you attribute it to NL. I was out of education and into educating by 97 and a 50% target was one bandied about a while before then.

Daveky- you mean devalued degrees of no value….

Engineering and maths based degrees. Still have good prospects

daveky – Member

The biggest suckers are the guys paying £30k for a degree now

but most of them won’t pay anything like £30k.

they’ll pay back around £15k

(26k-21k = 5k)
(5k x 0.1 = 500)
(500 x 30 years = £15k)

£15k, for 3 years education and subsidised living*, paid in small (£40) monthly instalments? it’s really not that bad.

(*most people i know borrow/ed enough to cover fees and rent, with maybe a little spare for ‘misc’)

I graduated in 2003 with a 13K student loan and mine was paid off in 8.5 years (no over payments)

The biggest suckers are the guys paying £30k for a degree now

A lot will pay back less than those still paying back under older systems. Mine should be payed off a few months before I retire. Although I based my calculations on getting a payrise each year = ha!