I don't like to rain on anybody's parade, but the student loan system looks barmy to me. Miss X, 32, who took out a £1,000 loan in 1997, and has deferred payment since due to not earning enough to pay it, now owes £5,000, because the interest has piled up. And what a teeny-weeny loan that was. Imagine a young person today having to take out three £9,000 loans for annual fees = £27,000, + about £5,000 maintenance, + interest for God knows how long, until they're earning about £23,000, which hardly any of them will ever manage to do, because youth unemployment is rocketing.
At least they're serving a debtor's apprenticeship. Mr Y, aged 33, was trained up from an early age – 15, when NatWest tempted him, with a £10 HMV voucher, which he never got, to open an account. Soon they gave him a £2,000 overdraft, then the Student Loans Company egged him on with an attractive £6,000 loan, and their office was next door to the Student Grant office, innoccent as a sweet shop. But after university he forgot to defer his loan, the debt was snappily passed on to a more ferocious outfit, £150 a month please, and when he defaulted, round came the bailiffs. So watch out, students. Just because you've finished your studies, don't know what you're doing, are moving about searching for a home and job, do NOT forget to defer your loan annually, while it grows bigger and bigger.
Miss Z made the same mistake, and her loans, taken out in 1995-7, are now being "serviced by Thesis Servicing", which means that Miss Z, who is penniless, must regularly pay a higher interest, until she manages to defer her loan, perhaps for ever. But who cares? Because if she lives until she's 50, only earning peanuts, she'll never have to pay it back. Which is fabulous for the poor and unemployed, but what about our government? How will it ever recoup the £squillions it has loaned to all the student paupers? What sort of a bizarre short-sighted plan was this? How about my dog for prime minister? It really can think sequentially.
