Martin Lewis warns university graduates face paying student loan back for longer

Pople who started university in or after 2023 face paying their student loan ‘tax’ for much longer, Martin Lewis has warned. The BBC Sounds podcast host and ITV regular spoke out on his latest podcast episode with a student loan warning for those heading to university.

Discussing fiscal drag, Money Saving Expert founder Martin said: “Because of all this framing about debt and going on about debt rather than saying this is quite an expensive additional tax, the government have dropped the repayment threshold, which is a bit like fiscal drag.

“Which means students on the new loans, who started in 2023 are going to repay a lot more because they are going to repay for 40 years." Mr Lewis said: “And they’ve got away with that without anyone screaming and instead they were screaming about £100,000 of debt which is irrelevant for the vast majority of people who have it.”

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Martin went on “First of all you would call the name a Graduate Contribution System. You would completely rename it. The biggest problem in student finance is that their loans are too small. Students in England have had low inflation rises which is pricing out those people especially from non university backgrounds which is a real threat to social inequality.

"The whole way we frame this discussion is wrong, we are student loan illiterate, it’s misnamed, misframed, misunderstood and we need to be very careful.” The synopsis for the latest episode explained: "Martin Lewis explains all you need to know about student finance, what you could be entitled to, and how much you will pay back.

"Martin is joined by a prospective university student and parents concerned about funding their children through university. We also look at consumer rights - can online shops refuse returns? AND in Mastermind this week a listener takes on a question all about Lifetime ISA's."