GRADUATES face paying back their student loans until they are in their SIXTIES under new Government plans.
University leavers — who are usually saddled with £45,000 of debt — will reportedly have to start paying it back once they start earning £25,000 a year.
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And they will have to wait 40 years until the debt is written off, not 30, sources told The Times.
The current threshold is £27,295 – over £2,000 more than the proposed figure – meaning many students will have to start paying off their debts sooner.
But ministers will sweeten the pill by tying student loan interest to inflation.
Education minister Michelle Donelan insisted the changes are “absolutely not” about deterring people doing degrees.
But the Education Policy Institute warned the move will hit the disadvantaged.
The plans are said to feature as part of the Government’s response to the first major review into higher education ordered by the government since 1963.
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The repayment changes are expected to apply only to new graduates, from the academic year 2024-25.
Tuition fees are expected to be frozen at £9,250, after trebling to £9,000 in 2012.
Vice-chancellors said this meant the real-terms income from tuition fees would have fallen by a third by 2024, when the changes are likely to come into force.
It comes after a report published by the House of Commons Library last December said the value of outstanding loans at the end of March last year was £160 billion.
It added: “The government expects that only 25 per cent of current full-time undergraduates who take out loans will repay them in full.”
The Department for Education (DfE) proposals, which will be put to consultation, will include new minimum entry requirements for university to ensure pupils “aren’t being pushed into higher education before they are ready”.
Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said: “The government should expand opportunity, not constrain it.
“[It is] madness to shrink universities and place a cap on aspiration by reducing the number of places for people to study at university.
“Government should ensure that anyone with the potential to succeed at university has the opportunity to do so.”
