For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment.
It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.”
Dugmore’s story is far from unique. Last month, the Labour MP Nadia Whittome set out that even with a salary in the top 5% of earnings, six years after she left university, her £49,600 had reduced by precisely £1,000.
Now, the political consensus has decreed: something must be done. Speaking to broadcasters on Sunday ahead of her schools white paper, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said she wanted to find “a fairer system”.
Phillipson’s department is now in talks with the Treasury to try to find out precisely what that might be. Officials say any answers are some weeks off, at least, and rule out anything to coincide with next Tuesday’s spring statement by Rachel Reeves.
In the meantime, the Conservatives have leapt in with a plan of their own. Billed, somewhat grandly, as part of a “new deal” for young people, the Tory idea would be to reduce interest rates on “plan 2 loans”, those taken out from 2012 – when annual tuition fees hit £9,000 – to 2022.
This would be paid for by cutting tens of thousands of university courses that do not provide what the party refers to as “value for money” for students, with suggestions made that this could include the creative arts.
The idea was announced by Kemi Badenoch on Monday in a broadcast interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, which took a dramatic turn when the personal finance guru Martin Lewis, scheduled to appear in another segment of the programme, dramatically appeared on screen to tell the Tory leader the plan was a poor one.
Lewis later apologised for his approach and arranged an off-camera chat with Badenoch for later in the week to discuss ways to change a system he has long argued was unfair.
Why has all this suddenly happened? It’s hard to say. Sometimes a political issue can lurk in the background for months, even years, before bursting out because of either dogged reporting by one outlet, as with the treatment of the Windrush generation, or even a single TV programme, as with the Post Office scandal.
In this case, it feels more a combination of events. Either way, it leaves Keir Starmer’s government with the task of trying to sort out a system it didn’t create and doesn’t like, with any solution likely to cost huge sums, with the added risk that it would benefit people who, as graduates, tend to be better off.
“The music has stopped and we’re left holding the parcel,” one government official lamented. “This is a Tory policy we would never have done – we recognise its unfairness. There is also the much bigger problem of the future of universities and how you finance them, which has been a mess for a very long time.
“The simple fact is there is no silver bullet for this. Even if you did spend a lot of money on it, there’s a risk of looking regressive. And it’s not as if we haven’t already done things for students, like bringing back maintenance grants.
“And while this is an important issue, there are other, very big issues we have been dealing with, like Send provision, childcare and breakfast clubs.”
All this might well be true. But the political music has stopped, forcing Phillipson and the Treasury, not to mention Starmer, to find a way forward. What that actually means not only remains to be announced but has yet to be decided, even in the broadest terms.
And as other ministers have found out, when the political mood shifts, there is not much you can do about it.
