Since @lewis_goodall mentioned he finished paying off his student loan, I'm gonna admit that 14 years after graduating, I've never earned enough to pay off a single pound of mine! Doubt I ever will either. But the lumbering of students with debt that is really a tax is only half

the story: the real reason this was done was to introduce markets into higher education, such that any course at any moment could be shut down, if it was considered too expensive to run, or wasn't attracting enough students who would have to pay over the odds (and for the rest

of their working life) in order to take them. This also means that HE courses now have to offer "value for money" and not just an education. Which frankly sucks if you work in a discipline where there isn't much money, like the arts and humanities. It is an enormous disincentive

to do good work in these disciplines - which are ultimately at the whim of wider markets than the graduate jobs markets - when what is taught and learnt is measured against having debt for the rest of your life, as opposed to the collective decision of the population, through the

state funding higher education institutions, about what sort of things people should be able to learn and research. In fact the whole thing was a response of the upper classes to the massive increase of students from all backgrounds in higher education in the 1970s-1990s. They

simply decided that the working classes shouldn't be allowed to study literature or music or art or history, without being made to pay impossibly for it for the rest of their lives. The truth is, most people would want the greatest freedom available for learning, but continue to

elect governments that think kids should only be able to learn things if it immediately translates into higher salaries, and which punish people for having horizons broader than wanting to be a management consultant.