Luke is 34 and works as a chartered surveyor in London. He went to university in 2012 and, like others from England that year, took out a new Plan 2 student loan.
But unlike many other university courses his – a higher national diploma in building surveying at the University of Greenwich – was only two years long, with annual tuition fees of about £6,000. Many students were facing annual tuition fees that had trebled from the year before, as the cap on the amount universities could charge rose to £9,000.
As a result, Luke left university with about £19,500 of debt, compared to many who graduated with £40,000 or more.
Still, he found the interest being added on to what he owed “overwhelming”, and began making voluntary repayments from the get-go.
“It was difficult to not focus on it and be stressed,” he says.
Luke now earns around £55,000 and owes £16,800. He thinks he still would have paid off his loan before it was wiped, even without the voluntary repayments.
“Who really knows what the future holds? But based on what I do know and what I do have control of, making early repayments will make a better future for me,” he says. “In six years’ time, if I have access to that amount of money above 9% of the threshold, then yes, that’s a huge amount of money that I can put to the needs of my, by then, seven- or eight-year-old child.”
