I still owe £64,000 in student loans – and I don’t regret a thing. As more than half of all graduates admit to signing up for a student loan without fully understanding the financial implications, anthropology graduate Amelia Jacobs refuses to say her university years were an expensive waste of money.
A Humbling Reality Check
There are few experiences more humbling for a 26-year-old postgraduate than logging into their student loans account. Last week, in a moment of morbid curiosity, I decided to commit the ultimate act of self-flagellation and did just that. After scraping my jaw off the floor at the numbers staring back at me – £50,000 on a Plan 2 undergraduate loan and another £14,000 for a Master’s – I got to thinking. Would my 17-year-old self, or my 23-year-old self applying for a Master’s, still click send on Ucas if they saw these figures?
The Treasury Inquiry Findings
Last week, a Treasury inquiry found that more than half of all graduates admitted to signing up for a student loan without fully understanding the financial implications – essentially, paying back 9 per cent of everything they earn over a threshold that currently stands at £29,385 per year. The survey of almost 50,000 students also revealed that most would not have gone to university had they known how much their debt would really cost them.
My Experience: Worth the Cost?
I was sold a student loan as the best money I’d ever spend. In many ways, it has been. Exploring and living independently in a new city, studying a subject I found hugely interesting, forming lifelong friendships, and meeting inspiring teachers – surely that has to be worth something. Sure, the strikes and a global pandemic meant I was paying £219 a week to sit inside, pyjama-clad, on Zoom lectures, but I had a good time doing it.
As youth dissatisfaction pulsates around the country, it’s easy to look to graduate debt as a lightning rod for our disenfranchisement. Every prospective MP promises to scrap it, only to bow out later. It’s not going anywhere any time soon. However, no one forced us to go to university. No one could have predicted the pandemic, or AI wiping out swathes of entry-level jobs.
The Job Market Reality
When I tried using my anthropology degree to get a job, it felt like entering the Battle of the Somme with a water gun. It’s easy to look back with the clarity of adulthood and judge decisions made by a teenager who didn’t yet understand the reality waiting for them. My younger sister opted not to go into higher education and instead trained as a yacht stewardess. As I write this, she is sailing around the Mediterranean earning £40,000 a year tax-free. So trust me, I know what it feels like to wonder whether I made the right choice – especially when comparing the Christmas presents we’re buying for our mum.
Owning Our Choices
It’s very easy to look back and groan. But I knew how much each term cost, I knew the average wage a graduate with my degree could expect, and now I am living on that wage. I went into my undergraduate degree with the milky-eyed optimism many 18-year-olds have on the cusp of adulthood. Twenty-six seemed like a distant future, getting a job felt inevitable, and success seemed like something that would naturally follow from doing exactly what I wanted in that moment.
If you told someone they were going to be punched in the face in 10 years, you could hardly expect them to flinch for a decade. I still think young people deserve the chance to have a university experience, should they choose it, without embittered former students telling them it was all a waste of time.
Moving Forward with Gratitude
We are living through a rapidly changing job market and, while my debt isn’t going away any time soon, I am choosing to be grateful for the money that has now been spent and for the degree I now have. It’s tricky, but we have to take ownership of the choices we made and move forward with the consequences. University gave me debt and questionable habits. It also gave me a life. That matters, too.
