Why student loans and all money is ‘hevel’

There’s a row gathering over student loans, and I can’t help but feel somewhat personally culpable.

Back in 2013 as a new graduate – soon after tuition fees had been raised from £3,000 to £9,000 per year – I did a three-month job giving presentations about student finance in sixth forms and colleges.

I can still remember the patter. In each presentation, after briefly sharing what a great time I myself had at university (with photos!) I cheerfully explained the costs and terms of the new “Plan 2” student loans. “It’s really not that bad,” was the overall gist of it: graduates would be charged interest rate of the Retail Price Index (then about 3%), plus an additional 1, 2 or 3% (based on earnings). Once they’d graduated, their repayments would be set at 9% of all their earnings over a given threshold (then £21,000 per year). “So, if you leave uni and get a good graduate job paying £25k per year,” I would say – although it sounded like a fancifully princely sum to me at the time – “that would work out at about £30 a month. Which, when you think about it, is about what you’d pay for a gym membership or mobile phone contract.” And after 30 years, the loan would be wiped.