“You’ll never get another loan like it,” my college tutor told me, reassuringly, when I was 18. He was right, though not in the way he intended. Aside from a mortgage, it’s unlikely I will ever take on a debt with interest rates this high, a repayment window this long, or such power to shape my adult life. Student loans weren’t just misunderstood by teenagers like me; they were actively downplayed and sold as harmless.
Like many British teenagers from working-class backgrounds – current stats put the number of first-gen UK uni students at 651,965 – I was the first in my family to go to university. Both my parents left school without finishing, and as far as anyone could tell, no one on either side had gotten to college. All this meant that my acceptance letter was greeted exclusively with adulation. We knew nothing about loans or league tables — and don’t even ask me about “red bricks” or “polytechnics,” because I only learned about those after I’d graduated.
