For today’s graduates, the debt which they accrue – upwards of £50,000 in some cases – has become a defining burden, especially given the stagnant job market, rising housing costs and the cost of living crisis. Yet, many over-50s who went to university didn’t have to pay for it, and have since benefitted from years of booming property prices, wages and generous pensions.
Generational disparity is no secret in modern Britain, but is it time that those who benefitted help pay for younger generations’ education?
Should over-50s pay a graduate tax? Political journalist Zoë Grünewald, 73-year-old millionaire businessman Charlie Mullins and personal finance expert Emma Lunn offer their perspectives.
Let me get this straight: student loans aren’t proper loans because the kids who took them out can’t pay them back, so over-50s should cough up to pay off students’ debts?
What kind of warped logic is in play here? The simple common-sense truth here is this: if you sign up for a loan, you pay it back, simple. Think about it; if you don’t have to make good on your debts, nobody would ever lend anyone money.
I don’t have a problem with taxes being used to pay for a public health system that, putting aside its inefficiencies and waste, is a vital service accessible to everyone, rich or poor. But picking up the tab so a generation of entitled millennials can do an educational “dine and dash” feels very not okay.
The idea that 50+ graduates who got a free ride before 1998 should stump up some cash doesn’t stack up. They made their decision to get a degree based on the facts at the time, just like I did when I chose a plumbing apprenticeship, and like debt-ladened millennials did when they took the loan cash to pay for their degrees.
It’s a universal law: borrow money, be it from a loan shark, a payday loan company, a mortgage from a bank, or a student loan from the government, it must be repaid, usually with interest. Penalties for defaulting may vary from a broken leg, bankruptcy or even jail, but the rule is clear.
However, there is something shady going on and as someone who’s never been near a lecture theatre my plumber’s perspective can see an enormous mis-selling scam at the heart of this mess, bigger than PPI and the car finance scandals combined.
I never aspired to be a graduate. It wasn’t a thing that existed as a possibility in my world, so I never grew up believing a degree was a golden ticket to prosperity. The problem is that many kids (and their families) were hoodwinked into believing in this fairy tale.
It escalated when prime minister Tony Blair set a target of getting 50 per cent of young adults into higher education by 2000. This was the beginning of the end for the graduate golden ticket.
Over the next decade, universities popped up all over the place – all you needed to give out degrees it seemed was a room with half a dozen desks and a printer to spew out certificates. The multibillion-pound education industry pretends to be interested in young minds when it’s their bums on seats they’re after, paid for by any method available.
The rest is history – waste-of-time degrees, funded by government loans that will never be paid back, because people can’t get jobs that pay well enough. Now outstanding student debt is a quarter of a trillion quid and rising.
The only thing a graduate tax would achieve is passing the buck to one group based on their age. If anyone should be penalised in this sad saga it’s the duplicitous education industry racketeers who continue to sell the lie that a university degree is a passport to a prosperous life.
But it’s not up to over-50s to fix the problems of debt-laden graduates. Every day you make thousands of little decisions, and the odd big one, and you deal with the consequences. That’s how life works.
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