PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan’s promise to go easy on PTPTN loan defaulters may saddle the country with a projected student debt of RM76bil by 2040 – early double what it is today.

PTPTN chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan revealed that the PTPTN promise was made when they didn’t know the country’s true financial situation.

Another reason for the sharp increase in projected debt could be due to easy access to the loans, which would, in turn, deter tertiary education institutions from lowering prices.

“If there is easy access to loans, universities won’t be under pressure to lower prices to compete for students,” said Sunway University Economic Studies Programme director Professor Yeah Kim Leng.

“They know that students have access to the loans, and they can use those loans as a benchmark for their pricing. So there is no competition for – or no pressure in fact to lower the prices of their programmes.”

Students often cannot repay these large debts because there is a mismatch between job opportunities and graduates in Malaysia - another factor in the number of loan defaulters.