FOR A DAY OR TWO LAST MONTH, WE HAD a brief throwback to 2012: suddenly, everyone was talking about student loans again. The news that Keir Starmer wants to walk back from Labour’s pledge to scrap university tuition fees provoked a flare-up from the under-30s, who pointed out that the current system functions less like a loan and more like a graduate tax. Payments are deducted automatically from income, and interest rates are set high enough that most graduates will never clear their debt, though they may end up paying back more than the initial loan amount.
A letter in The Times describes the current loan system as part of a “demographic protection racket”, and it’s hard not to agree. If we entertain the view that student loan repayments are functionally a tax, then a 25-year-old graduate earning £28,000 per year faces a marginal tax rate 9 per cent higher than a 65-year-old graduate whose salary is almost twice as high at £49,000 despite both having benefited from the same university education.
On top of this, while around three-quarters of over-65s own their home outright (so have no rental or mortgage costs), young graduates typically see almost half their post-tax income disappear paying for a temporary place to live. There is now not a single London postcode where the average rent for a
