HWUMC

My parents are Scots, and I was born in Scotland, but due to the fact the last 3 years of my life pre-uni were not spend with a residential address in Scotland, I get to pay back my tuition fees (woo-hoo).

Add on 3 years worth of interest if you want slightly more accurate figures, but;
"English" undergrad in England = £3000 loan
"English" undergrad in Scotland = £1700 loan
"Scottish" undergrad in Scotland = £1700 grant

The advantage to getting money from Local Education Authorities (LEA - England) as opposed to SAAS, is that I get a much larger maintenance loan than if I had resided in Scotland for a bit {hooray for £5k/yr debt}

Andy wrote:how can you be on the internet at 9am when you're in a mandatory class from 8.30am???

For you it looks like if I were here at 9:00 AM, cause the forum has the UK time, but remember that you're six hours ahead of my country (although I have checked and I don't see any post of mine at that hour.) Now, how the hell is one supposed to pay those crazy loans once you're done with school?? How long does it take you to gather the money and give it back?

It's complicated.
The way I think it works is that once you're out of uni and earning more than a specified amount, (I think it's something like £16k/year), you have to pay a slice of your earnings over that amount to the Student Loans Company or Student Awards Agency for Scotland, I'm not sure which. If you never get over £16k, you don't have to pay back any. I think there's also a time factor as well: after a certain time the debt's written off. Again, not sure how that works. And this is as was before the SNP got elected with a pledge to change the system, so I don't know if they did and if so what the new set-up is.

Over £15k and you start paying back, but unless you earn over £25k you're only paying off part of the interest. If you've managed 15-25 years (ish) earning under £15k (an education well spent), or possibly 5 years abroad then it gets written off.

Considering the amount student loans has doles out, they have only regained a six-figure sum...

Andy wrote:.... Considering the amount student loans has doles out, they have only regained a six-figure sum...

Are you saying that the SLC is only actually getting back a fraction of the amounts it has loaned out?

If so, then that means that the premise that graduates earn significantly more than non-graduates in the long run, may actually not be true? I guess you could then contend that if graduates are failing to earn sufficient to pay back the SLC, then there are too many graduates?

Hmmmm.