Student finance is a political football. Many politicians, of all parties, and some in the media, portray it for maximum political point-scoring at the cost of ensuring it’s understood by those who take out the finance.

The danger is policy is then made based on misperceptions, not reality. While the psychological impact of policy changes do matter, it is better and cheaper to fix that by addressing misunderstandings – so any changes have the maximum practical benefit rather than just sugar-coat.



For example, tweaking the current system by lowering tuition fees by a few thousand pounds or cutting the interest rate would undoubtedly be popular and psychologically beneficial.

However, these changes could be regressive. Repayments are based solely on earnings; the ONLY people who would pay less as a result are those who clear what they owe in full within the 30 years before their loan wipes – ie, the very highest-earning graduates – yet it could result in less revenue for universities which could impact quality of education for all.

So if it’s a question of limited resources, these are not priorities. We should focus on changes helping all students and graduates – especially ones that will ease the passage for those from non-traditional university backgrounds.

The Augar review requires “... maintaining the link that those who benefit from post-18 education contribute to its costs”, so my suggestions are focused on improvements to the current (Plan 2 student loan) system.

That should not be read as a wider judgement on the merits of one system or another (eg, whether tuition fees should be totally scrapped). Those are political questions over the balance of where the burden falls between the individual and the taxpayer. This is about improving what we have now.