'I will probably never pay off my £114,000 student debt' says teaching graduate
A councillor has spoken out about her huge student debt which she says is larger than her mortgage.
Councillor Katie Weston says she will probably never pay off her £114,600 student debt from studying for degree, masters and teacher training qualifications even if the interest stopped mounting.
It has racked up almost £40,000 interest over 12 years, despite repayments, after she originally borrowed around £61,000.
The 29-year-old Labour councillor for Billingham South said in a meeting discussing Stockton Borough Council’s efforts to narrow gaps in educational attainment: “I have £114,000 in student debt.
"I have yet to actually meet somebody with more than me. It’s now more than what my mortgage is.”
The secondary school supply teacher and politics graduate later told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “I’m going to pay my mortgage off before my student debt, which is mad. It’s hideous.
“The day I graduated from my bachelors, I already had £9,000 of interest. It’s racked up, I do an annual check on my birthday.
“The interest has added up more than the repayments. I think I would have to be on an extremely high salary to have any hope of paying it off now.
“I’ve tried not to think about it. But it’s getting to the point where you can’t not think about it.”
She said she felt it was mis-sold when she applied as a teenager and was told the payments would be the equivalent of a phone contract.
Cllr Weston continued: “We were told you won’t pay it back until you were earning a decent amount. But the threshold is only a few grand above minimum wage.
“It feels like nothing is being done for the younger generation. We’re just being saddled with this debt, whilst the people that saddled us with that debt went to university for free.”
She said people from low-income backgrounds needed more loans, so faced more debt, than wealthier students whose parents could foot the bills.
Cllr Weston believes young people needed to carefully examine their options, adding : “University was really good and I couldn’t do what I did without it. But it’s hard to recommend it as a default choice.”
She said during the meeting she did not have another option at 18 and more apprenticeships were needed.
Cllr John Coulson told the meeting: “For years the emphasis has been on going to universities, people are coming out with degrees that are absolutely useless.
“They can’t get a job. But more importantly, there’s now a pool of debt.
“There are skills now that are disappearing because kids are not training in things like plumbing, electricians and the like.”
A government spokesperson said they were committed to improving the student funding system’s fairness: “Since we were elected, we have been committed to supporting the aspiration of anyone who can and wants to attend higher education, including by reintroducing targeted maintenance grants.
"The student finance system is also heavily subsidised by government to protect lower-earning graduates, with repayments determined by incomes and outstanding loans and interest being cancelled at the end of repayment terms.
“This is all alongside our ongoing support for working people starting off in life, as we build 1.5m new homes, expanding government-funded childcare, introducing free breakfast clubs and freezing rail fares.”