Parents are scamming their own children by sending them to university ...Middle East

University has been sold to young people as the gateway to opportunity, yet the cost of that promise has risen dramatically. In England, graduates now leave university with loans averaging £53,000, under a complex repayment system that the current Government is under political pressure to review.

Some argue the UK’s student loan model is fair, with repayments linked to income and unpaid balances eventually written off. Critics, however, claim it functions more like a long-term graduate tax, trapping borrowers for decades.

So are student loans a scam? Former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, parent Paul Wiltshire and graduate Sophie Butcher offer their perspectives.

It is understandable that graduates are revolting against their Plan 2 loans; the only question is why it took them so long. Up until now we have been duped into going along with these awful loans saddling young adults with more than £50,000 of debt before they’ve even got their first job.

The flashpoint has been the Government freezing the repayment threshold, but whilst this is unfair, it is a relatively small issue. The problem with student loans goes far deeper than this.

Even if the Government U-turns and changes the repayment terms, it won’t head off a rising tide of outrage. More and more people will start to endure the onslaught of the loan system that condemns the vast majority of graduates to pay a 9 per cent repayment rate for 25 to 40 years, and with some still paying up to £3,000 to £4,000 a year in their sixties.

Moreover, the loans don’t even cover the full cost of university.

According to a report from the think-tank the Higher Education Policy Institute, students have to find up to an extra £15,000 or more a year to have a minimum acceptable standard of living at university, which is made up by a subsidy from their parents and by working during term time and holidays.

And, to cap it off, graduates aren’t getting the highly paid jobs that they were promised, and far too many are harmed by having just the debt and no increased pay prospects.

The market system gives HE institutions a commercial incentive to offer as many courses in whatever subjects they wish and sell them to as many school leavers as they can. And it’s easy money; the school leavers don’t have to pay up front, as they all qualify for the ultimate buy now, pay later scheme funded and underwritten by the government.

At the core of this scam is a market malfunction whereby the HE sector is able to still stoke up demand for degrees no matter how bad the prospects are for graduates.

This is enabled by perpetuating myths such as “a further three years of education can’t fail to do anything but good”, “all who get a degree will boost their pay”, “young adults aren’t ready for the workplace until they get a degree first”, and “people who don’t get a degree are a write-off”.

Yet every year we are complicit. We scam our own children when we whip them up into a frenzy on A-level results day and ship them off into the HE sector, blasé about them signing up for life-changing student loans.

We do it because we are terrified that our child, without a degree, will be discriminated against in the job market. Yet this is just another element of the scam.

Many graduates end up initially in low-paid, junior roles that are little or nothing to do with their degree. And even if the job is connected to the degree, the employer likely could have employed them aged 18 instead to learn on the job with some targeted training. They just need an employer willing to give them a chance without forcing them to buy a degree first.

It is blindingly obvious what needs to change to eliminate the waste and diminish the harm being done by mass higher education.

A first essential step is to break society’s discrimination against non-graduates. We need to ban most “graduate-only” job adverts in order to give 18-year-olds a chance to gain employment as trainees as an alternative to university.

Then we need to cut off the easy flow of money by restricting student loans to about half the current level of students and introducing minimum academic entry standards – say three Bs at A-level – to qualify for a loan for a three-year degree.

And then some of the money saved on wasteful loan write-offs can be used to implement measures such as reducing interest rates (perhaps even to zero) and subsidising the course fees. Far too many are being enticed to go to university – that needs to end once and for all.

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