In 2017, when a then 18-year-old Nuala from west London got into Leeds University to study architecture, she didn’t give too much thought to taking out a student loan.
“It’s just part of the process of going to uni, everyone does it so you don’t really think that deeply about it,” she tells me from Cambridge, where she is completing the final year of her integrated masters. “I just signed up. For most people, it’s the only option.”
