Cast your mind back to the simpler times of 2018: Avengers: Infinity War was released. We had the #MeToo movement. The internet gave birth to “Big Chungus”. There was a royal wedding, which everyone was pleased about forever.
Alongside these major events, I was stringing up fairy lights in a room that looked quite like a prison cell and learning that anything can go into a stir fry if you just believe. Which is to say that I went off to university.
Four-and-a-half years later and two degrees down, I stopped being a student. Nine months after that, in September 2022, my student loan debt stood at £72,800. By November 2023, it had grown to £76,100. In June of this year, I owed £81,500. This week, Keir Starmer decided to up tuition fees by 3 per cent, and I now have just over £84,000 of student debt.
That’s £12,000 of interest in three years, none of which I’ve spent in a seminar room or a slightly-falling-apart-student-union. And the best part is, it’ll just keep going up.
For a fun, not-at-all-harrowing exercise, I decided to calculate the daily cost of my university degrees, according to what I owe now. If you take four years with 39 teaching weeks each, the golden figure comes out at £538 a week. That’s £108 a day. And that’s £108 a day now – but that will increase, exponentially, until I’m 53. By which point, the interest charged will have bloated my total debt to a whopping £217,250.
Can you hear that noise? It’s the sound of students in Scotland, Germany, Norway, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, France, Finland and Austria laughing at us. It’s embarrassing.
With tuition costs and student loan interest continuing to rocket, the chances of future generations ever paying off their debts are even slimmer than before. In my office, we have a fun game of comparing our debts; one of my colleagues cheerily announced that they owe a mere £69,000. Hooray! I suspect the government knows exactly what us lowly graduates have always known; payback time is never gonna happen. So why continue the charade?
I’d love to know where the huge sum that students pay for higher education is actually going. My four years at uni were stressful. I had a great time, but I could see that courses were underfunded, coursework got lost and modules got cancelled.
Every year saw lecturers’ strikes, meaning I sometimes paid more than £100 a day not to be taught anything. My master’s degree was delayed by six months, by which time I’d signed a lease on a house; so before I started the course, I took a really miserable job at a tech company, which only added to my stress.
Even now I’ve left university, the woes in higher education continue. Lecturers’ strikes are still a thing, with their numbers being cut; and there’s been a huge problem with student accommodation due to RAAC concrete, meaning more students having to move off campus and into private housing.
Last month, President Biden cancelled $4.5bn in student debt. America is a country that loves to make money, so this was quite something. Did socialist Starmer follow suit? Of course not. For a politician who prizes social mobility, he seems to be intent on putting millions off studying for useful jobs because of the fear of living in debt for decades.
My student loan has become a constant companion – and in a way, its presence is almost a comfort. I get to watch it grow, like a child, or a horrific sense of dread. Maybe, when my debt finally disappears in 2052, I’ll feel a sense of loss. Perhaps I’ll hold a funeral for it, which would cost approximately the equivalent of seven months of tuition fees. Bargain.
