My degree cost nothing – I’m sick with guilt at the £50,000 debt my daughters face

As a student, I was so terrified of getting into debt that I wrote down every purchase and expenditure in a little black book. Debt scared me far more than arriving in London alone aged 18 armed with nothing more than an A-Z and a suitcase. No one likes to owe money, but for certain personality types, the fear is particularly real. Money buys many things, not all of them material. Yes, it buys freedom, but more than that, it buys control. It’s kind of quaint, how diligently I strove to avoid an overdraft – not least because my worry was completely disproportionate. It was the 90s. I had it easy. Not wealthy parent easy, but the next best thing: a grant (from memory, of around £2,500) that ensured I started each term of university with a decent sum of money in the bank that I simply had to preserve. My tuition fees were paid by the local authority, so my grant was mine to spend on food, rent, highlighter pens and as many Moscow Mules as I could drink. Truly, it was the best of times. Imagine, as an 18 year-old, being given thousands of pounds that you didn’t have to pay back, that didn’t clock up interest, that didn’t make you wake up in a cold sweat every night stressing about whether you’d ever find a job that earned you enough to repay it. Shorts This is all that my daughters will be able to do – imagine – for their reality is diametrically different. They’re as incredulous that I was given free money as I am that they will graduate with up to £50,000 of debt. While I had little cause to worry, they have every reason to. It makes me sick to my stomach that they and the 1.5 million other students currently in higher education in England will start their adult lives with this crippling financial burden. In England, the old-style student maintenance grant was effectively phased out for new students from 1999, with living-cost support shifting primarily to loans. Tuition fees arrived in 1998, initially capped at £1,000 a year and means-tested. In 2006, fees rose substantially to £3,000 a year, with tuition-fee loans introduced so students no longer had to pay upfront. The really dramatic increase came in 2012, when the maximum fee rose to £9,000 a year. Maintenance grants were later reintroduced, but abolished again for new students from 2016, replaced by larger maintenance loans. Today, England has one of the most expensive student loan systems in the world. More than £21bn a year is loaned to students in England, with the value of outstanding loans estimated as being £295bn. By the late 2040s, the government forecasts this will climb to £500bn. This year, anger has focused on Plan 2 loans, which have such high interest rates that borrowers owe more than when they started repaying them. Writer Laura Craik getting ready for a night out during her university days in the early 90s The average student loan debt upon graduation fluctuates significantly across the UK. According to data monitored by The House of Commons Library, the highest debts are incurred by students in England, who face debts of £43,000-£53,000, compared with £39,000 in Wales, £28,000 in Northern Ireland and £17,000 in Scotland, where tuition is still free for residents, which explains why more than one 18-year-old I know tried to apply to Scottish universities by using their Scottish grandparents’ home addresses. One claimed he’d emancipated from his parents and was living with his 85 year-old granny in Glasgow. While his story didn’t pass muster with UCAS, you can see why he (and his parents) might feel motivated to be economical with the truth when a lie might save them £43k. As someone born in Edinburgh who chose to study in London (a foolish decision for someone so scared of debt), there’s a pleasing symmetry in the fact that my younger daughter, who’s 16, was born in London and fancies studying in Edinburgh. But she won’t, because the University of Edinburgh, in common with all Scottish universities, offers BA courses that span four years, as opposed to England’s three. The idea of racking up 25 per cent more debt to study at any Scottish uni is as fantastical as it’s preposterous. It may also explain why some Scottish universities seem to boast an unusually high proportion of wealthy English and overseas students. To be fair to wealthy people, some do seem to insist that their student offspring take out the loan in a bid to teach them about financial independence. Maybe they genuinely refuse to help them pay it back, or maybe they drop a few thousand here and there into the bank account. Who knows? It’s not my world. My world is a 20-year-old student who is about to enter her final year at a Russell Group university, whatever that means, and who has worked her way through uni from the beginning. I can’t speak for my daughter except to say there aren’t words to express how proud I am that she’s had the drive and determination to work double shifts (usually 16-hour days, six days a week during the long university holidays) in a busy London restaurant throughout her degree to reduce her debt. But I also worry about her work/life balance. How jarring that this harried term, with all its implications, should even apply to someone so young. It’s wrong that thousands of teenagers leave further education with a massive debt hanging over their heads. It’s wrong that for some, this reality is so terrifying that they almost can’t tolerate it, and are driven to extreme measures, and long working hours, in an attempt to mitigate. Whether students feel forced into finding paid employment while studying for their degrees or not, the looming spectre of the debt they’ll have accrued by graduation can’t fail to have an impact on their university experience. Where my only concern was turning in my essays on time, theirs is a pressure cooker of responsibilities. I’ve heard of some students so busy working to make ends meet have missed out on university life altogether. Granted, getting drunk in the student union on subsidised beer is a privilege, not a right, but it still feels harsh that there’s a two-tier system at play, where those with financial support are living their best lives and those with little or none are worrying how to balance the books. How can this not compromise your experience of further education? Rather than immersing themselves in the opportunity to learn more about a subject they love, or at least chose to study, the poorest students are left worrying whether they’ve signed up to some naive three (or more) year financial gamble. It’s hardly surprising that mental health issues are rising among students. A 2025 survey by Save the Student found that 75 per cent of respondents said they were worried about making ends meet, with 50 per cent saying money worries had negatively affected their mental health. Meanwhile, 61 per cent said they skipped meals occasionally to save money, 10 per cent had used a food bank and 48 per cent had considered dropping out because of money-related issues. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they also have to contend with the clusterf**k that is the graduate job market: AI, decreasing numbers of entry-level roles, and the very real concern that they might never find a job, never mind one that will earn them enough to pay back their loan. While the government claims that 87.6 per cent of graduates were in employment in 2024, this statistic pertains to working age graduates aged 16-64. A more useful statistic is that seven per cent – roughly one in 14 – of students who graduated in 2023-4 (the most recent year for which figures are available) were unemployed 15 months after graduating. Graduate job postings, meanwhile, have fallen about seven per cent year on year in 2026. This, combined with spiralling interest rates and complex, controversial changes to the income threshold for student loan repayment, has created a tsunami of fear. The IFS estimates that the government’s decision to freeze the threshold at £29,385 for three years, rather than increasing it with inflation, will make the average graduate repay about £93 more in 2027-28 and £259 more by 2029-30 than if the threshold had risen with inflation. There’s some glimmer of hope in that Andy Burnham’s government has promised to review England’s student-loan system, describing current arrangements as unfair and burdensome for graduates. The review will examine repayment terms, particularly Plan 2 loan. The government has also committed to reintroducing targeted, means-tested maintenance grants from 2028–29, worth up to £1,000 a year, alongside loans, funded through a levy on international-student provision. While this won’t cancel student debt, it aims to reduce the burden on lower-income students and make repayments fairer. As for the idea that your student days are the best and most carefree of your life, chance would be a fine thing. Although a complete overhaul of the current student loan system would be even finer. Find Laura on X @LauraCraik and Instagram @lauracraik