Over five billion pounds worth of student loans have been “lost”, because the government has lost track of information about the recipients. Over 300,000 students have either emigrated, returned home to another country, or are still unemployed, meaning that the government cannot collect their debts.
And students earning under the current minimum salary of £21,000 are not expected to have to repay their loans. Tuition fees are now costing people far too much. The rules for paying back what can be around £9000 are quite reasonably relaxed. However, people are still struggling to pay it all back, even with thirty years in which to do it, and no annual target amount for collection.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has blamed the Business Department (BIS) for their lack of care over analytics about the people taking out loans. There are many former students currently living overseas, whom the NAO blame for a majority of the repayments not being made. However, 71% of them are make regular payments.
However, a large number of these loans have not been paid back because graduates are unemployed, or simply not earning enough to be expected to make repayments. It seems that the government’s current student finance scheme is actually working out to be more expensive than old systems.
Is it right for students to be charged so much for courses that might not be working towards a career? Perhaps it would be more economical for students taking vocational degrees to have to make up for the cost of education millions of people, because ultimately they will be the ones earning the most, and so will be expected to receive the highest quality of tuition.
The government is going to have to make some sort of improvement, as it looks as though the current system isn’t working.