That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
An important debate. Any party actually acknowledging problems in life dont begin with whether you get to keep the triple lock or not will start making progress
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
Yes. I think that's for several reasons, and varies across courses hugely, but one big factor is that the value of tuition fees per home student dropped in real terms by about a third between 2012 and 2023.
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
They've been working on reversing that, with that nice Mr Trump demanding cross-licensing to Intel, which is of course bad news for Taiwan's American shield.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
UCL recently paid out £21 million to students unhappy with their teaching during COVID-19 and another 36 universities face claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6qge7rmm1o One of the main complaints was that teaching was purely or largely online. The idea that we can just switch to online materials is simplistic.
They got through the admissions process and paid for an in-person course, and were delivered something else.
Switching to online teaching, for a significantly lower price and lower barriers to entry, would be a vast improvement in actually teaching the course to more people and increasing the education of the population.
But as I said, what the universities are actually selling is the scarcity.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
For your sake, I hope your next assignment isn’t to South Gyle Business Park.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
17 year olds have limited ability to weigh those things up. They do it because everyone else is doing it, or because their parents expect it.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
UCL recently paid out £21 million to students unhappy with their teaching during COVID-19 and another 36 universities face claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6qge7rmm1o One of the main complaints was that teaching was purely or largely online. The idea that we can just switch to online materials is simplistic.
Switch to online completely and at the same fees ? No.
Switch to online partially and at reduced fees ? Yes.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
For your sake, I hope your next assignment isn’t to South Gyle Business Park.
I've stayed in the Ibis Budget a few times!
Skean Dhu near Aberdeen, Shirley?
The locals all said it had been built as a prison, but got rejected for that purpose as too grim.
I’d go with a ladder of UK gilts timed (the extent possible) to match the payment schedule. You’d make 3+ percent.
But you could probably also get that from a series of fixed term deposits at your bank which might be easier
Royal London Short Term Money Market will get you north of 4% and very simple and you can cash in easily
If ethical investment is important to your Church, consider The Reliance Bank. Their fixed term bonds have decent rates and profits go to good causes. My Church has some reserves invested with them.
Thanks. It’s money held under a will trust. I thought I could purchase National Savings Income Bonds, which give 3.75%, only to discover they refuse charity beneficiaries.
Haven't read previous thread, but have found A J Bell easy to deal with to hold large amounts in gilts, money market funds, whatever, for a company, am pretty sure they can set up accounts for trustees as well.
(currently holding a large amount of https://www.ajbell.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BGB6GZ5 which avoids US and other overseas treasuries, helps me sleep better at night given the Mad King has already had it whispered in his ear that he could default against foreign UST holders...)
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
You’re a political opponent so Mandy Rice-Davies applies WRT Badenoch.
I watched it and thought Balls did a far better job.
Lewis has a fair bit of backpedaling and reputation managing to do over this after his prior advice. Standing over her is a bad look.
Tim Shipman referred to him as a man high on his own supply. I think that’s fair.
Some more facts on Fab 18, Tainan, and why it’s a tiny bit different to “South Gyle Business Park”
“TSMC’s Fab 18, located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, is often described as the "beating heart" of the modern digital economy.
It isn't just a factory; it is a GIGAFAB® - a facility of such immense scale and technical sophistication that it essentially dictates the pace of global technological progress.
As of 2026, here is why Fab 18 remains a remarkable feat of human engineering and economic strategy:
1. The Global Epicenter of 3nm and 5nm Production Fab 18 is the primary production base for the world’s most advanced chips. While other fabs handle older "legacy" nodes, Fab 18 specializes in: • **5nm (N5) Family: The chips that powered the first wave of 5G smartphones and high-end laptops.
• 3nm (N3) Family: Currently the most advanced logic technology in volume production. These chips offer up to 15% higher speed or 30% lower power consumption compared to the 5nm generation.
Every flagship iPhone, high-end NVIDIA AI GPU, and Apple Silicon Mac chip likely spent its "infancy" inside the cleanrooms of Fab 18.
2. Mind-Boggling Scale (The GIGAFAB® Concept) The term "Gigafab" isn't just marketing; it refers to a facility capable of producing more than 100,000 12-inch wafers per month.
• Physical Size: The total cleanroom area exceeds 160,000 square meters - equivalent to about 25 standard soccer pitches.
• Investment: The total investment for all phases of Fab 18 exceeds NT$1.86 trillion (roughly $60 billion USD), making it arguably the most expensive construction project in human history.
3. Precision Engineering at the Atomic Level
To manufacture chips at 3nm, Fab 18 utilizes Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. These machines, made by ASML, are the most complex tools ever built. • They use light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers to "print" circuits. • The environment must be so stable that even a slight vibration from a nearby truck or a microscopic dust particle could ruin a multi-million dollar batch of wafers.
4. Economic and Geopolitical Weight Fab 18 is the crown jewel of Taiwan's "Silicon Shield." Its importance to the global economy is so high that its operational status directly affects global GDP.
• The "3nm Multiplier": TSMC estimates that 3nm technology alone will power products with a market value of $1.5 trillion within five years of mass production.
However, if production at Fab 18 was ever stopped, for more than a few days, much of the world economy would slowly but surely grind to a halt, as we know it.”
If Ed Conway's book Material World is correct, all these facilities are rigged up with explosives to detonate on the event of a Chinese invasion. That may hamper production a tad.
He recently did a podcast on Merryn Talks Money. Fascinating.
Many of the businesses he visited in the U.K. have since closed.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
UCL recently paid out £21 million to students unhappy with their teaching during COVID-19 and another 36 universities face claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6qge7rmm1o One of the main complaints was that teaching was purely or largely online. The idea that we can just switch to online materials is simplistic.
They got through the admissions process and paid for an in-person course, and were delivered something else.
Switching to online teaching, for a significantly lower price and lower barriers to entry, would be a vast improvement in actually teaching the course to more people and increasing the education of the population.
But as I said, what the universities are actually selling is the scarcity.
These things already exist. There are lots of free MOOCs (so, online teaching with the lowest possible price and no barrier to entry) from top universities, e.g.https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free , often with a premium model where you pay to be assessed at the end (but it's still way cheaper than a regular course). There was a lot of excitement about them a few years ago, but the drop-out rate is absoutely huge and they've fundamentally not had the disruptive effect predicted.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
Can the taxpayer bail out everyone who’s had Buyers remorse or too dense to understand changes
Leaseholders, students not wanting to pay backtuition fees, WASPI women
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
The US and Chinese calculations about Taiwan are fascinating and momentous as they can do each other such tremendous harm.
Closing down Taiwan would, obvs, not be great for the US or, indeed, the world economy. So Xi can, presumably, give Trump the collywobbles with his obvious burning desire to "reunite" as his legacy. (Sound familiar? VVP has gone down this track)
OTOH, the US Navy can very easily close down the shipping lanes to China, which would lead to the country literally starving and the lights going out, given the amount of food and fuel the Chinese import by sea.
However we needn't worry given the maturity, clear-headedness, and openness to expert advice of the decision-makers concerned.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
You snivelling little git!
To be fair I watched the clip and both Lewis and Balls did pile on but Kemi kept calm and dealt with it
And fair play to Lewis for his apology and agreement for subsequent meetings to take place to improve Kemi's offer
As a conservative I am very pleased Kemi is wanting to help young people rather than just pensioners
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
That may be so, but at least it shows a shift of focus away from oldies like me. That's a good thing.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
She was not an mp when the scheme came in place in the coalition years
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
Tuition fees down by a third in real terms. The main cost is staff time. Result: a third less student contact time.*
* No jokes about a certain Gorton & Denton candidate please.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
My history's a little hazy, Horse. But didn't Labour introduce Tuition fees in the 1990s?
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
It wasn't really a decision to offshore. Then then US chip industry (Texas Instruments and Intel) rejecting Morris Chang's proposal (Chang was a senior executive of TI) to set up a foundry business, where the chip fabs would produce chips for customers' own designs.
Chang got an order from Philips (still then a presence in semiconductor manufacturing), and a big grant from the Taiwanese government, and built a business from scratch.
Quite simply Chang out innovated the US manufacturers, who at the time saw no value in his business model. And the US tech industry got lazy because they could make bigger profits outsourcing manufacturing production.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
Not done her or the Tories any harm at all. Farage will be fuming. He shoild probably arrange a flotilla to the hearest Halls of Residence
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
My history's a little hazy, Horse. But didn't Labour introduce Tuition fees in the 1990s?
Badenoch knows 90% of the media won't tell the truth.
I don't blame her for her denial on that premise as the media are so balanced.
What I do have issues with is her denial of the facts and lies.
Rachel though has the option to do something about it at the next budget.
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.
That is refreshing and other politicians should learn the lesson
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
My history's a little hazy, Horse. But didn't Labour introduce Tuition fees in the 1990s?
Originally from Sep/Oct 1998 intake at universities.
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
Wasn't it the reverse? Taiwan deliberately chose to pour energy into dominating a critical sector of technology so that the US, and others, would have a vested interest in defending them should China try anything, no?
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
It’s now a story as entitled, privileged, journo types have realised what compound interest and its effect is.
Martin Lewis now has some serious reputation management to undertake as many are blaming his advice at the time.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Grandson was at Manchester; don't think he ever met any senior people. As I said, his father's experience was much better, as was that of two of his cousins a dozen years earlier. However, I've a great-nephew shortly due to graduate from Durham; I'll have to try to find out what his experience was. One of my granddaughter's is at Melbourne; she seems to be quite happy, and interacting with staff.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
My history's a little hazy, Horse. But didn't Labour introduce Tuition fees in the 1990s?
They did, yes, but the devil is in the detail. The coalition government made big changes, although they were designed to have a system as close to a graduate tax as possible. Then the post-coalition Tory government made further big changes. The current system is largely the reponsibility of the 2015-24 Conservatives, albeit being built on prior foundations laid with and by the LibDems and Labour.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
17 year olds have limited ability to weigh those things up. They do it because everyone else is doing it, or because their parents expect it.
If they were guided properly, it could be a good opportunity to teach them options appraisal and cost benefit analysis. Teenagers considering going to university or any other form of higher education should be guided to develop financial models showing the costs of university compared to vocational training or dropping out of education, and the discounted financial benefits of different courses. Combined, of course, with non-quantifiable benefits such as the satisfaction they'd get from different jobs.
Analytical comparison of different courses of action is a useful life skill. But the education system ignores this opportunity to teach it.
Not raised is the most, in my view, fundamental issue. Which is. You can't lump the explosive, noisy, hyperactive rambunctious kids in with the terrified and anxious school refusers. They have different needs.
But that's what will continue to happen.
Neither has the issue of the substantial number of education professionals who are SEND deniers.
Nor the question of who will staff them. It often turns out to be either the cheapest (minimally trained and unqualified) or a punishment posting for the uncooperative staff.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
The student loan system is yet another Osborne wheeze that has come back to bite the Tories on their donkey.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
The student loan system is yet another Osborne wheeze that has come back to bite the Tories on their donkey.
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.
That willingness to engage is about the best thing I have seen he do.
She now needs to turn it into a good policy.
Then they might start getting somewhere.
I think the next thing is to extend that to engaging with the Government on certain areas - mainly Defence at first imo.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
Pointing out there’s buyers remorse here doesn’t make me unaware of the situation here. Don’t make assumptions because it made an ass of u not me. I’d favour some sort of debt forgiveness, especially for key jobs/skills. This isn’t new. When Merry Somerset-Webb advocated it in 2023 on QT I felt it made sense.
On the one hand I’m sympathetic on the other hand it’s not a very sympathetic group from its advocates in the media like Lewis Goodall and Oli Dugmore, two self righteous wankers, rather like the WASPI women because the way it comes over in the media is ‘I didn’t realise this, bail me out’.
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
Wasn't it the reverse? Taiwan deliberately chose to pour energy into dominating a critical sector of technology so that the US, and others, would have a vested interest in defending them should China try anything, no?
Yep. The US did not throw away their lead in chips, it was taken from them.
The Taiwanese government recognised the importance of semiconductors early on and pumped money and effort in to supporting companies that would build fabs on the island. That led to the founding of TSMC and the smaller UMC.
Japan tried something similar, which worked for a while, but their mistake was trying to get existing domestic technology companies like NEC and Hitachi to invest in semi fabs. They did, but it wasn't a core part of their business so as soon as the industry went in to a lean period they diverted funds away to other areas and fell behind the Taiwanese.
Their one notable success was Toshiba, which heavily invested in manufacturing flash memory and became the biggest supplier in the world for a while. A financial scandal forced them to spin off their flash memory division as Kioxia, which is something like third or fourth in the market today.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
My grandson considered doing a degree in Golf Club management. In retrospect it might have proved considerably more rewarding, in terms of job prospects than History. His father nearly had a fit at the suggestion though!
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
My grandson considered doing a degree in Golf Club management. In retrospect it might have proved considerably more rewarding, in terms of job prospects than History. His father nearly had a fit at the suggestion though!
Not if he wanted to be a history teacher or Professor or work in a museum for instance
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
What I'd like to see is a maximum amount of interest chargeable to loans, maybe 50% of the loan value. I'd also look at a system where only the original capital attracts interest and I'd also go back to the plan 1 system where the interest rate is linked to the bank rate rather than RPI. Finally I'd lower the fees cap to £6k and cut the number of funded places for nonsense courses or anything with the word business, management or studies in it. People who want to study those can pay uncapped fees.
We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best.
At the same time we need to have a rethink over what university is for in the era where entry level desk jobs have disappeared. We need more students to do medicine, dentistry, physical engineering, pure sciences or on the flip side we need more teachers, especially at primary level, more vocational careers that don't involve desk based work.
How do we get more graduates into jobs and not slavishly paying debt for a degree that will never give them any value, that's the question all parties need to answer. £15-20k worth of debt per year for a degree is extremely poor value today and unless this changes I expect our universities sector will be looking at bankruptcy much sooner than people realise.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Useful if your parents are millionaires and you want to meet a Prince who might study the same subject at a certain posh university and become a future Queen though
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
Lots of people have been pointing this out for years.
The student loan system is yet another Osborne wheeze that has come back to bite the Tories on their donkey.
Coalition wheeze.
The Lib Dem’s too.
Osborne. Not Tories or LibDems or any government backbencher. Osborne.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Useful if your parents are millionaires and you want to meet a Prince who might study the same subject at a certain posh university and become a future Queen though
I love the fact that Wills saw the light after two weeks and switched to geography.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
I’d also add I think it’s nuts to raise the state pension by 4.8% and freeze the student loan payment threshold.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
Actually, I think you CAN assume the LibDems would put Labour into Number 10. Inconceivable that Ed Davey would back the Tories, expecially after their last experience in Govt (he lost his seat after that experiment).
Since 2010 the LibDems have moved left, and the Tories have moved right. In 2010 there really wasn't all that much difference between the Orange Bookers (Clegg, David Laws, et al) and the Cameroons. Between Kemi and Sir Ed? - it's a gulf.
Between Cleverly and Sir Ed a bit less so though I would still expect the LDs to back Starmer or Davey or even now Ed Miliband, Rayner or Cleverly though would be interesting but as you say would never happen on current polling and the LDs would never back Reform
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
I suspect this is an area where a lot of us are in agreement. I don't think we should be taxing field experts such as yourself as highly as we are.
However, the reality is that a load of tax payers' money is pissed up the wall on people doing degrees who really don't need to do a degree.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
17 year olds have limited ability to weigh those things up. They do it because everyone else is doing it, or because their parents expect it.
It's a life lesson then. No point in baling them out as its all part of their (financial) education. Also the parents might have chipped in a few comments unless they are financially illiterate themselves.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
The problem was fees were never linked to earnings premium. Law or Economics or Medicine at a Russell Group University should always have had far higher fees than say creative arts or English at a low ranked university but the fee was always the same regardless of course or university
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
Its quite complicated. In 2020 about now we were all staring down the barrel and starting to think about wfh, and what assessment might look like and how we might do it. We got through to the end of that academic year, and I think none of the students already at Uni had any complaints - it was a national crisis.
2020 intake though -yes, they were sold the dream of Uni life and then very rapidly got locked into their on campus rooms with purely online/recorded content etc. Not great (although I would be interested to know how many of those claiming against their Unis followed the social distancing etc 100% - anecdotally Bath's campus was full of parties, a lot of the time. I don't blame them). We basically tried to deliver what we could but workshops and labs were really hard. I recall one student at the start of labs (in person) saying it was like meeting a TV star when she met met. Not my good looks etc but because that's all she had seen of me - on the PC screen.
So after year 1 for those guys, our course at Bath (very specifically pharmacy) was pretty much back to normal. It has to be - placements and in person clinical training are crucial. Our students have consistently praised us for our quick return to normality (with adjustments).
I guess if other places and courses have stuck to more online modes there will be more to grumble about.
Lastly - students also bar some responsibility. Last week I ran three 2 h workshops (in person) that I tried to run during covid. During covid it was almost impossible to engage the students. Most refused to turn on cameras, and it was hard work. In person I was constantly helping students with questions. Sometimes you get out what you put in.
And lastly - one of the reasons why a student may get less face to face time is the expansion of student numbers, often coupled with a reduction in staff headcount. Certainly the case here.
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
What I'd like to see is a maximum amount of interest chargeable to loans, maybe 50% of the loan value. I'd also look at a system where only the original capital attracts interest and I'd also go back to the plan 1 system where the interest rate is linked to the bank rate rather than RPI. Finally I'd lower the fees cap to £6k and cut the number of funded places for nonsense courses or anything with the word business, management or studies in it. People who want to study those can pay uncapped fees.
We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best.
At the same time we need to have a rethink over what university is for in the era where entry level desk jobs have disappeared. We need more students to do medicine, dentistry, physical engineering, pure sciences or on the flip side we need more teachers, especially at primary level, more vocational careers that don't involve desk based work.
How do we get more graduates into jobs and not slavishly paying debt for a degree that will never give them any value, that's the question all parties need to answer. £15-20k worth of debt per year for a degree is extremely poor value today and unless this changes I expect our universities sector will be looking at bankruptcy much sooner than people realise.
Actually we need more students doing business studies focused on how to set up a small business where you work for yourself as you won't automate yourself, Medicine and Dentistry already has more graduates than training places available anyway. Some IT and factory engineering posts at a lower level are also being automated
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
My grandson considered doing a degree in Golf Club management. In retrospect it might have proved considerably more rewarding, in terms of job prospects than History. His father nearly had a fit at the suggestion though!
A degree in golf club management?
When I was looking at sixth form colleges, Merrist Wood had a stand at the college fair at my school. They offered a course on green keeping that included getting to play golf regularly.
My friends and I were all up for it but told no in no uncertain terms.
But that was further education not higher education, so would have been great for someone not keen on academic subjects.
Wait until Leon learns that the all of the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturing relies on a German company founded in 1889.
I am fast catching up my on my semiconductor research
And I’ve now worked out how to write the fuck out of this fucker. Tainan (with an N) is such a great story
Eg at lunch I went to a Buddhist temple where they worship the God of the Sea (Mazu) - and they really do it. Lots of people and lots of praying. And it is famous as the site where a Ming warlord ended his life, folllowed by five concubines who all voluntarily hanged themselves from the rafters. You can see where they did it
So it’s full of tremendous exotic history and charm and ugly buildings and literally some of the best food in the world. And yet all day the jets scream low overhead as the airforce practise for the inevitable invasion. Partly because of that one fucking huge insane sixty billion dollar building, Fab 18, making the chips that might end humanity, on the outskirts of town
If I can’t write a brilliant piece about this place then I shall resign from the Knapper’s Gazette and restrict myself to making cement elves
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Useful if your parents are millionaires and you want to meet a Prince who might study the same subject at a certain posh university and become a future Queen though
I love the fact that Wills saw the light after two weeks and switched to geography.
She had already made sure she got the intro to him in the first 2 weeks though, she was going to switch to what she saw as a dull subject like Geography though, they were still going to need one of them to be able to explain to visitors the history of the paintings in the Royal Collection!
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
The problem was fees were never linked to earnings premium. Law or Economics or Medicine at a Russell Group University should always have had far higher fees than say creative arts or English at a low ranked university but the fee was always the same regardless of course or university
No, that is another problem and illustrates my earlier point that university is a finishing school, not a trade school. That is why there is an earnings premium to some universities rather than courses. Boris got the Telegraph job after the Times sacked him because he read Classics at Oxford, not because he read Classics.
ETA destroying the old school tie (college scarf) would be the best thing any party could do for the economy. Recruit people on merit!
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
I suspect this is an area where a lot of us are in agreement. I don't think we should be taxing field experts such as yourself as highly as we are.
However, the reality is that a load of tax payers' money is pissed up the wall on people doing degrees who really don't need to do a degree.
Educating people at school pre-18 is not seen as “pissing money up the wall”. Why is educating people post-18 seen as pissing money up the wall?
My view is that education is never a waste. However that only extends to the “tuition fee” not the maintenance loan. The latter always gets forgotten about, maybe because journalists had parents to pay their living costs.
I think the former isn’t a waste but the Government shouldn’t be paying the living costs of students doing “useless” degrees.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
If you are paying 400 a month with 27K outstanding will you not clear it in about 5-6 years? And then it won't be a graduate tax any more?
Hyper, aggressive, arrogant, never wrong, knows best
Every problem is somebody else's fault. No responsibility for past Tory policy.
Unable to answer in any detail, just attacking anybody, everybody.
I doubt any swing or undecided voter is ever going to listen to that and think she is in any way credible.
Kemi is like Thatcher in the sense she would cross the road to have an argument with someone, she doesn't quite have Thatcher's gravitas and intelligence and style though
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
Not done her or the Tories any harm at all. Farage will be fuming. He shoild probably arrange a flotilla to the hearest Halls of Residence
Not sure he’s complaining too much about being “stuck” in the Maldives for a few days.
Last time I was there was on my honeymoon, and it cost me $900 a night!
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.
That is refreshing and other politicians should learn the lesson
Of not listening to or engaging with an opposing point of view?
In the GMB clip - she just kept repeating, paraphrased: we must do something, my plan is something, therefore we must do my plan. If she will actually engage and listen, as suggested, then of course that is welcome.
The basic point from Lewis is that for many the loan is effectively a graduate tax - it will never be paid off. As payments are income linked (rather than debt linked) lowering an interest rate such that the debt will be smaller but will still never be paid off makes no practical difference for most graduates. The richer, who might pay it off, will be able to do so sooner at lower cost. And a greater proportion might be able to pay it off. But for those who cannot it makes no difference whatsoever.
(Full disclosure: I have paid off my loan, so I have no skin in this game, at least until my kids get to that age. My wife has a loan still, so I guess that could affect us - although I'm not sure what plan hers is under)
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
What I'd like to see is a maximum amount of interest chargeable to loans, maybe 50% of the loan value. I'd also look at a system where only the original capital attracts interest and I'd also go back to the plan 1 system where the interest rate is linked to the bank rate rather than RPI. Finally I'd lower the fees cap to £6k and cut the number of funded places for nonsense courses or anything with the word business, management or studies in it. People who want to study those can pay uncapped fees.
We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best.
At the same time we need to have a rethink over what university is for in the era where entry level desk jobs have disappeared. We need more students to do medicine, dentistry, physical engineering, pure sciences or on the flip side we need more teachers, especially at primary level, more vocational careers that don't involve desk based work.
How do we get more graduates into jobs and not slavishly paying debt for a degree that will never give them any value, that's the question all parties need to answer. £15-20k worth of debt per year for a degree is extremely poor value today and unless this changes I expect our universities sector will be looking at bankruptcy much sooner than people realise.
"We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best."
I love the idea that Universities aren't living within their means!
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
If you are paying 400 a month with 27K outstanding will you not clear it in about 5-6 years? And then it won't be a graduate tax any more?
Maybe. Depends on the interest rate which is variable and whether I keep my job. I plan to overpay to clear it faster when other debts are paid off.
Ultimately though I will be 40+ years old then. Middle aged. That would have been my entire youth subject to that heavy tax burden.
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut
Wasn't it the reverse? Taiwan deliberately chose to pour energy into dominating a critical sector of technology so that the US, and others, would have a vested interest in defending them should China try anything, no?
Yep. The US did not throw away their lead in chips, it was taken from them.
The Taiwanese government recognised the importance of semiconductors early on and pumped money and effort in to supporting companies that would build fabs on the island. That led to the founding of TSMC and the smaller UMC.
Japan tried something similar, which worked for a while, but their mistake was trying to get existing domestic technology companies like NEC and Hitachi to invest in semi fabs. They did, but it wasn't a core part of their business so as soon as the industry went in to a lean period they diverted funds away to other areas and fell behind the Taiwanese.
Their one notable success was Toshiba, which heavily invested in manufacturing flash memory and became the biggest supplier in the world for a while. A financial scandal forced them to spin off their flash memory division as Kioxia, which is something like third or fourth in the market today.
Japan is still one of the key suppliers of tools and materials for semiconductor manufacturing.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
A friend studying Art History at Oxford (PhD) commented that it was really the most expensive library card in history. Apart from the one-to-ones with Martin Kemp.
Useful if your parents are millionaires and you want to meet a Prince who might study the same subject at a certain posh university and become a future Queen though
I love the fact that Wills saw the light after two weeks and switched to geography.
The story I heard (from a St Andrews lecturer) was that the move was actually pre planned. So that all the people who signed up to do a degree just to be next to Wills were wrong footed.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
If you are paying 400 a month with 27K outstanding will you not clear it in about 5-6 years? And then it won't be a graduate tax any more?
Maybe. Depends on the interest rate which is variable and whether I keep my job. I plan to overpay to clear it faster when other debts are paid off.
Ultimately though I will be 40+ years old then. Middle aged. That would have been my entire youth subject to that heavy tax burden.
But the point is that the loans mean its NOT a graduate tax, as a graduate tax you would carry on paying forever.
The system is clearly not right at the moment, but it isn't a graduate tax.
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.
That is refreshing and other politicians should learn the lesson
Of not listening to or engaging with an opposing point of view?
In the GMB clip - she just kept repeating, paraphrased: we must do something, my plan is something, therefore we must do my plan. If she will actually engage and listen, as suggested, then of course that is welcome.
The basic point from Lewis is that for many the loan is effectively a graduate tax - it will never be paid off. As payments are income linked (rather than debt linked) lowering an interest rate such that the debt will be smaller but will still never be paid off makes no practical difference for most graduates. The richer, who might pay it off, will be able to do so sooner at lower cost. And a greater proportion might be able to pay it off. But for those who cannot it makes no difference whatsoever.
(Full disclosure: I have paid off my loan, so I have no skin in this game, at least until my kids get to that age. My wife has a loan still, so I guess that could affect us - although I'm not sure what plan hers is under)
Engaging as they have both done following the show
This is a welcome change that many could learn the lesson
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
What I'd like to see is a maximum amount of interest chargeable to loans, maybe 50% of the loan value. I'd also look at a system where only the original capital attracts interest and I'd also go back to the plan 1 system where the interest rate is linked to the bank rate rather than RPI. Finally I'd lower the fees cap to £6k and cut the number of funded places for nonsense courses or anything with the word business, management or studies in it. People who want to study those can pay uncapped fees.
We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best.
At the same time we need to have a rethink over what university is for in the era where entry level desk jobs have disappeared. We need more students to do medicine, dentistry, physical engineering, pure sciences or on the flip side we need more teachers, especially at primary level, more vocational careers that don't involve desk based work.
How do we get more graduates into jobs and not slavishly paying debt for a degree that will never give them any value, that's the question all parties need to answer. £15-20k worth of debt per year for a degree is extremely poor value today and unless this changes I expect our universities sector will be looking at bankruptcy much sooner than people realise.
It's not helped by the UK graduate premium in terms of pay now becoming one of the lowest in the developed world.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
It's not just the tax, it's the debt. Earn good money and get hit by a de facto tax. Earn rubbish money and you've got a lifetime of debt hanging over your head.
The problem was fees were never linked to earnings premium. Law or Economics or Medicine at a Russell Group University should always have had far higher fees than say creative arts or English at a low ranked university but the fee was always the same regardless of course or university
No, that is another problem and illustrates my earlier point that university is a finishing school, not a trade school. That is why there is an earnings premium to some universities rather than courses. Boris got the Telegraph job after the Times sacked him because he read Classics at Oxford, not because he read Classics.
ETA destroying the old school tie (college scarf) would be the best thing any party could do for the economy. Recruit people on merit!
Had Boris read Law at Oxford though and become a KC or Economics at Cambridge and become a partner at Goldmans or Chairman or CEO of a big company he would likely have earnt even more than he did at the Times and Telegraph before he became an MP.
To get into Oxbridge now you need A*AA or higher on average in terms of A level grades. So they do now recruit on merit, Oxbridge degrees are prestigious as they are the universities hardest to get into in terms of grades and interview performance
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
My son was certainly very unhappy with his son's experience, when compared to his own. Covid didn't help, of course and History, which my grandson read is much more of a 'read' than electronic engineering, which my son studied. But there wasn't, or certainly, didn't seem to be, the social interaction, with lecturers as well as other students, which my son recalled.
Its quite complicated. In 2020 about now we were all staring down the barrel and starting to think about wfh, and what assessment might look like and how we might do it. We got through to the end of that academic year, and I think none of the students already at Uni had any complaints - it was a national crisis.
2020 intake though -yes, they were sold the dream of Uni life and then very rapidly got locked into their on campus rooms with purely online/recorded content etc. Not great (although I would be interested to know how many of those claiming against their Unis followed the social distancing etc 100% - anecdotally Bath's campus was full of parties, a lot of the time. I don't blame them). We basically tried to deliver what we could but workshops and labs were really hard. I recall one student at the start of labs (in person) saying it was like meeting a TV star when she met met. Not my good looks etc but because that's all she had seen of me - on the PC screen.
So after year 1 for those guys, our course at Bath (very specifically pharmacy) was pretty much back to normal. It has to be - placements and in person clinical training are crucial. Our students have consistently praised us for our quick return to normality (with adjustments).
I guess if other places and courses have stuck to more online modes there will be more to grumble about.
Lastly - students also bar some responsibility. Last week I ran three 2 h workshops (in person) that I tried to run during covid. During covid it was almost impossible to engage the students. Most refused to turn on cameras, and it was hard work. In person I was constantly helping students with questions. Sometimes you get out what you put in.
And lastly - one of the reasons why a student may get less face to face time is the expansion of student numbers, often coupled with a reduction in staff headcount. Certainly the case here.
And wider adoption of the Oxbridge model where most of the teaching is done by postgrads or specialist tutors rather than researchers.
On Covid, I dimly recall meeting a chemistry student who'd had a post-pandemic bootcamp-type lab course to make up for all those missed practicals.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
My grandson considered doing a degree in Golf Club management. In retrospect it might have proved considerably more rewarding, in terms of job prospects than History. His father nearly had a fit at the suggestion though!
A degree in golf club management?
When I was looking at sixth form colleges, Merrist Wood had a stand at the college fair at my school. They offered a course on green keeping that included getting to play golf regularly.
My friends and I were all up for it but told no in no uncertain terms.
But that was further education not higher education, so would have been great for someone not keen on academic subjects.
Greenkeeping is the “trade” of working on the course itself. Looking at grass types, planting and mowing schedules etc.
A degreee in “golf course management” is just another hospitality degree but with a golf element rather than a hotel element.
If you work at a golf club you’ll get free golf though, I did bar work as a student and played every couple of days. At a local golf club, not the Belfry.
Hyper, aggressive, arrogant, never wrong, knows best
Every problem is somebody else's fault. No responsibility for past Tory policy.
Unable to answer in any detail, just attacking anybody, everybody.
I doubt any swing or undecided voter is ever going to listen to that and think she is in any way credible.
Kemi is like Thatcher in the sense she would cross the road to have an argument with someone, she doesn't quite have Thatcher's gravitas and intelligence and style though
God help the Tories in a 6 week GE campaign with that style.
She's going to end up arguing with everyone and just being seen as someone with a serious behavioural problem.
I'm no Vine fan but he hit the nail on the head when he suggested she became very tetchy the minute she was asked about past Tory policy.
She was after all an MP for 10 years and a junior Minister for 7 years.
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Badenoch wasn’t even in parliament when it was enacted.
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
You clearly have no understanding of the situation. It is a tax, not a real loan. Government changes taxes all the time. If you want to promote economic activity, free the under 30s of a massive extra tax burden. Mine is currently circa. £400 per month on top of everything else.
I had the good fortune of getting through university by 2008, so a bit out of the loop on this stuff, but if you're paying a grad tax of £400 per month, does that not mean you're on quite good money?
Yeah, circa £57k which is good don’t get me wrong but not very high these days in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a salary where an extra £400 per month is not noticed, especially if kids are involved (not something I currently have).
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
If you are paying 400 a month with 27K outstanding will you not clear it in about 5-6 years? And then it won't be a graduate tax any more?
Maybe. Depends on the interest rate which is variable and whether I keep my job. I plan to overpay to clear it faster when other debts are paid off.
Ultimately though I will be 40+ years old then. Middle aged. That would have been my entire youth subject to that heavy tax burden.
But the point is that the loans mean its NOT a graduate tax, as a graduate tax you would carry on paying forever.
The system is clearly not right at the moment, but it isn't a graduate tax.
I’m on Plan 1. Most of the discussion is about Plan 2 or later with much higher debts.
Hyper, aggressive, arrogant, never wrong, knows best
Every problem is somebody else's fault. No responsibility for past Tory policy.
Unable to answer in any detail, just attacking anybody, everybody.
I doubt any swing or undecided voter is ever going to listen to that and think she is in any way credible.
Kemi is like Thatcher in the sense she would cross the road to have an argument with someone, she doesn't quite have Thatcher's gravitas and intelligence and style though
Mrs Thatcher was widely regarded as a lightweight until she gained ex officio bottom in Number 10. Kemi will benefit similarly.
Comments
Any party actually acknowledging problems in life dont begin with whether you get to keep the triple lock or not will start making progress
ETA: And I guess someone's going to do it, so might as well be me... These massages have no happy ending then?
However why does Badenoch get away with it when she was in the government that presided over the current system in the first place?
The repayment is high precisely because of what they did.
They talk about changing the terms of the loan but the Tories set the precedent for that in the first place.
Again the only people with any genuine “not our problem” are Reform and the Greens.
Reeves will clearly do something about tuition fees, just too late to get any political credit. But nobody was pointing this out when the Tories were in power, why not?
Switching to online teaching, for a significantly lower price and lower barriers to entry, would be a vast improvement in actually teaching the course to more people and increasing the education of the population.
But as I said, what the universities are actually selling is the scarcity.
Switch to online partially and at reduced fees ? Yes.
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
https://x.com/martinslewis/status/2025878042183168152
Dear @KemiBadenoch, apologies for gate crashing your @GMB interview today. Student loans are so life-impacting that I wanted to ensure the key point was made - that financially, if not psychologically, the repayment threshold is a bigger issue than the interest, (as I explain here: x.com/MartinSLewis/s…)
Thank you for being so courteous after the interruption - you handled it far better than I would have the other way round. I have asked my office to request a meeting, if you are available, to discuss this more calmly.
The locals all said it had been built as a prison, but got rejected for that purpose as too grim.
(currently holding a large amount of https://www.ajbell.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BGB6GZ5 which avoids US and other overseas treasuries, helps me sleep better at night given the Mad King has already had it whispered in his ear that he could default against foreign UST holders...)
I watched it and thought Balls did a far better job.
Lewis has a fair bit of backpedaling and reputation managing to do over this after his prior advice. Standing over her is a bad look.
Tim Shipman referred to him as a man high on his own supply. I think that’s fair.
Many of the businesses he visited in the U.K. have since closed.
Leaseholders, students not wanting to pay backtuition fees, WASPI women
Anyone else ?
Closing down Taiwan would, obvs, not be great for the US or, indeed, the world economy. So Xi can, presumably, give Trump the collywobbles with his obvious burning desire to "reunite" as his legacy. (Sound familiar? VVP has gone down this track)
OTOH, the US Navy can very easily close down the shipping lanes to China, which would lead to the country literally starving and the lights going out, given the amount of food and fuel the Chinese import by sea.
However we needn't worry given the maturity, clear-headedness, and openness to expert advice of the decision-makers concerned.
And fair play to Lewis for his apology and agreement for subsequent meetings to take place to improve Kemi's offer
As a conservative I am very pleased Kemi is wanting to help young people rather than just pensioners
Nobody pointed it out as no one realised. No we have buyers remorse so the taxpayer has to cough up for the entitled,
They should really not be starting "Andrew charged .." when it continues ".. taxpayers for massage services when envoy, claim ex-civil servants",
That causes falsely raised hopes at word 2, in the anticipation of "for serious crime" or "down by herd of wild elephants".
She was not an mp when the scheme came in place in the coalition years
And she has started the dialogue
* No jokes about a certain Gorton & Denton candidate please.
Then then US chip industry (Texas Instruments and Intel) rejecting Morris Chang's proposal (Chang was a senior executive of TI) to set up a foundry business, where the chip fabs would produce chips for customers' own designs.
Chang got an order from Philips (still then a presence in semiconductor manufacturing), and a big grant from the Taiwanese government, and built a business from scratch.
Quite simply Chang out innovated the US manufacturers, who at the time saw no value in his business model.
And the US tech industry got lazy because they could make bigger profits outsourcing manufacturing production.
Best ignoring him.
Hi @MartinSLewis, thank you. I really appreciate that, and honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are.
You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
It took me eight years to pay mine off. I made my last payment in 2011, and I remember how happy I was, and my debt was only £14,000. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a young person with £40,000 debt today.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours.
I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People.
As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.
In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my job: setting out practical solutions and showing how we can make life in this country better, especially for young people.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Farage will be fuming. He shoild probably arrange a flotilla to the hearest Halls of Residence
I don't blame her for her denial on that premise as the media are so balanced.
What I do have issues with is her denial of the facts and lies.
Rachel though has the option to do something about it at the next budget.
Martin Lewis now has some serious reputation management to undertake as many are blaming his advice at the time.
https://x.com/hoffman_noa/status/2025888954856136757
Major SEND reforms announced:
- A new legal duty on schools to create Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for every child identified with SEND.
- Currently, more than 70 per cent of children with additional needs in England have no legally enforceable entitlement to support
One of my granddaughter's is at Melbourne; she seems to be quite happy, and interacting with staff.
Analytical comparison of different courses of action is a useful life skill. But the education system ignores this opportunity to teach it.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/inclusion-base-for-every-school-but-who-will-pay/
Not raised is the most, in my view, fundamental issue.
Which is. You can't lump the explosive, noisy, hyperactive rambunctious kids in with the terrified and anxious school refusers.
They have different needs.
But that's what will continue to happen.
Neither has the issue of the substantial number of education professionals who are SEND deniers.
Nor the question of who will staff them. It often turns out to be either the cheapest (minimally trained and unqualified) or a punishment posting for the uncooperative staff.
The Lib Dem’s too.
She now needs to turn it into a good policy.
Then they might start getting somewhere.
I think the next thing is to extend that to engaging with the Government on certain areas - mainly Defence at first imo.
On the one hand I’m sympathetic on the other hand it’s not a very sympathetic group from its advocates in the media like Lewis Goodall and Oli Dugmore, two self righteous wankers, rather like the WASPI women because the way it comes over in the media is ‘I didn’t realise this, bail me out’.
The Taiwanese government recognised the importance of semiconductors early on and pumped money and effort in to supporting companies that would build fabs on the island. That led to the founding of TSMC and the smaller UMC.
Japan tried something similar, which worked for a while, but their mistake was trying to get existing domestic technology companies like NEC and Hitachi to invest in semi fabs. They did, but it wasn't a core part of their business so as soon as the industry went in to a lean period they diverted funds away to other areas and fell behind the Taiwanese.
Their one notable success was Toshiba, which heavily invested in manufacturing flash memory and became the biggest supplier in the world for a while. A financial scandal forced them to spin off their flash memory division as Kioxia, which is something like third or fourth in the market today.
I actually don’t mind continuing to pay off my loan for the reasons Taz has stated. I am Plan 1 plus Postgraduate Loan so the amount overall is lower but the interest rates have made it painfully long to pay off. I still have circa £27k outstanding and I graduated 13 years ago.
I am just saying that many bemoan the youth tax burden especially when it comes to kids, etc, but student loans make up a not insignificant part of that tax burden for a good 20-30 years.
His father nearly had a fit at the suggestion though!
We need to make university fees fairer and if that results in universities needing to live within their means better then that's probably for the best.
At the same time we need to have a rethink over what university is for in the era where entry level desk jobs have disappeared. We need more students to do medicine, dentistry, physical engineering, pure sciences or on the flip side we need more teachers, especially at primary level, more vocational careers that don't involve desk based work.
How do we get more graduates into jobs and not slavishly paying debt for a degree that will never give them any value, that's the question all parties need to answer. £15-20k worth of debt per year for a degree is extremely poor value today and unless this changes I expect our universities sector will be looking at bankruptcy much sooner than people realise.
It should be the other way round, as a minimum.
Is she on drugs?
Hyper, aggressive, arrogant, never wrong, knows best
Every problem is somebody else's fault. No responsibility for past Tory policy.
Unable to answer in any detail, just attacking anybody, everybody.
I doubt any swing or undecided voter is ever going to listen to that and think she is in any way credible.
However, the reality is that a load of tax payers' money is pissed up the wall on people doing degrees who really don't need to do a degree.
Many independent bodies are mildly impressed by the serious nature of the proposals and funding initially setup.
The NUT not happy, are they ever and some individuals won't be happy but you can't please everyone.
Contrast her considered style with the gobshite know all on Vine now and I know who will deliver more and it's Bridget.
2020 intake though -yes, they were sold the dream of Uni life and then very rapidly got locked into their on campus rooms with purely online/recorded content etc. Not great (although I would be interested to know how many of those claiming against their Unis followed the social distancing etc 100% - anecdotally Bath's campus was full of parties, a lot of the time. I don't blame them). We basically tried to deliver what we could but workshops and labs were really hard. I recall one student at the start of labs (in person) saying it was like meeting a TV star when she met met. Not my good looks etc but because that's all she had seen of me - on the PC screen.
So after year 1 for those guys, our course at Bath (very specifically pharmacy) was pretty much back to normal. It has to be - placements and in person clinical training are crucial. Our students have consistently praised us for our quick return to normality (with adjustments).
I guess if other places and courses have stuck to more online modes there will be more to grumble about.
Lastly - students also bar some responsibility. Last week I ran three 2 h workshops (in person) that I tried to run during covid. During covid it was almost impossible to engage the students. Most refused to turn on cameras, and it was hard work. In person I was constantly helping students with questions. Sometimes you get out what you put in.
And lastly - one of the reasons why a student may get less face to face time is the expansion of student numbers, often coupled with a reduction in staff headcount. Certainly the case here.
When I was looking at sixth form colleges, Merrist Wood had a stand at the college fair at my school. They offered a course on green keeping that included getting to play golf regularly.
My friends and I were all up for it but told no in no uncertain terms.
But that was further education not higher education, so would have been great for someone not keen on academic subjects.
And I’ve now worked out how to write the fuck out of this fucker. Tainan (with an N) is such a great story
Eg at lunch I went to a Buddhist temple where they worship the God of the Sea (Mazu) - and they really do it. Lots of people and lots of praying. And it is famous as the site where a Ming warlord ended his life, folllowed by five concubines who all voluntarily hanged themselves from the rafters. You can see where they did it
So it’s full of tremendous exotic history and charm and ugly buildings and literally some of the best food in the world. And yet all day the jets scream low overhead as the airforce practise for the inevitable invasion. Partly because of that one fucking huge insane sixty billion dollar building, Fab 18, making the chips that might end humanity, on the outskirts of town
If I can’t write a brilliant piece about this place then I shall resign from the Knapper’s Gazette and restrict myself to making cement elves
ETA destroying the old school tie (college scarf) would be the best thing any party could do for the economy. Recruit people on merit!
My view is that education is never a waste. However that only extends to the “tuition fee” not the maintenance loan. The latter always gets forgotten about, maybe because journalists had parents to pay their living costs.
I think the former isn’t a waste but the Government shouldn’t be paying the living costs of students doing “useless” degrees.
Last time I was there was on my honeymoon, and it cost me $900 a night!
In the GMB clip - she just kept repeating, paraphrased: we must do something, my plan is something, therefore we must do my plan. If she will actually engage and listen, as suggested, then of course that is welcome.
The basic point from Lewis is that for many the loan is effectively a graduate tax - it will never be paid off. As payments are income linked (rather than debt linked) lowering an interest rate such that the debt will be smaller but will still never be paid off makes no practical difference for most graduates. The richer, who might pay it off, will be able to do so sooner at lower cost. And a greater proportion might be able to pay it off. But for those who cannot it makes no difference whatsoever.
(Full disclosure: I have paid off my loan, so I have no skin in this game, at least until my kids get to that age. My wife has a loan still, so I guess that could affect us - although I'm not sure what plan hers is under)
I love the idea that Universities aren't living within their means!
Ultimately though I will be 40+ years old then. Middle aged. That would have been my entire youth subject to that heavy tax burden.
The system is clearly not right at the moment, but it isn't a graduate tax.
This is a welcome change that many could learn the lesson
To get into Oxbridge now you need A*AA or higher on average in terms of A level grades. So they do now recruit on merit, Oxbridge degrees are prestigious as they are the universities hardest to get into in terms of grades and interview performance
On Covid, I dimly recall meeting a chemistry student who'd had a post-pandemic bootcamp-type lab course to make up for all those missed practicals.
A degreee in “golf course management” is just another hospitality degree but with a golf element rather than a hotel element.
If you work at a golf club you’ll get free golf though, I did bar work as a student and played every couple of days. At a local golf club, not the Belfry.
She's going to end up arguing with everyone and just being seen as someone with a serious behavioural problem.
I'm no Vine fan but he hit the nail on the head when he suggested she became very tetchy the minute she was asked about past Tory policy.
She was after all an MP for 10 years and a junior Minister for 7 years.
In the midst of it.