Over the last couple of years I have been saying across various conversations about the impact of paying back student loans could have on future student recruitment. I would talk about how the next generation of students will be the first whose parents were required to take out student loans to pay their fees and for the maintenance. Their parents would have the seen the real life impact of their student debt on their lifestyle. It would reduce their real income and would have had an impact on other financial choices such as mortgage affordability.

You could quite easily see these parents advising their children to really think about university and also think about other possible options. 

We have seen some evidence of this with the huge demand for degree apprenticeships, getting paid, part time study, and no loans. The supply of such apprenticeships has certainly not increased to meet the demand.

When the government raised student fees, there was a almost audible sigh of relief from the university sector, however I do remember the press coverage of the time rarely if ever mentioned the impact of this on students. They would need get larger student loans.

Over the last few weeks there has been substantial press coverage about student loans, it certainly has become a political issue and is getting talked about on the news, in the press, and online. There have been whole programmes and features on the issues of student loans. What we are now seeing is human impact stories about loans.

The BBC News has published an article which makes for interesting reading.The article, Paying back my student loan is more painful now I have a young family, covers the story of a graduate who went to university in 2014 who took out a Plan 2 student loan. The one line from the article that stood out to me was this one.

Richmond is “really pleased” with where he’s got to in his career in recruitment. But he says he has colleagues doing just as well who didn’t go to university, so he questions whether he needed his degree.

When this comparison starts, then some people will start to think seriously about whether going to university, getting loans, is going to be the best option. Is there going to be that graduate premium in earnings that will offset the extra student loan charge.

On the WonkHE site, David Kernohan looks at the graduate premium in much more detail than I could ever do.

I think another factor out there is that university is no longer the life changing event was, even in the 2000s. I remember when I went away to university, it was a paradigm shift, the only way to communicate was by letter and using the payphone with huge queues. Today technology means even if you do go away to university, you don’t need to break everyday contact with friends and family. Likewise, in order to survive at university you will probably need to have a part-time job as well. Then, your life is not university, university is just something you do alongside everything else. That experience may mean that looking at alternative pathways for the same kind of benefit.

Something else which gets lost in the discussion is that for many students, they don’t go away to university they stay at home and go to their local university (to save money, but for other social reasons as well).  For many students alternative routes to higher education may become the preferable option.

There are lots of benefits to higher education, the question though going forward can you achieve those benefits in ways which don’t mean getting huge student loans and the negative impact that debt has for life after university.