Student debt doubles to £5,800 since 1999

Published on Saturday 22 March 2008 18:46

STUDENT debt more than doubled between 1999 and 2007, a Nationalist MSP has revealed.

Figures obtained by Alex Neil through a Parliamentary answer show that average student debt upon entering repayment in 1999 was 2,863. By 2007, this had increased to 5,808, according the Student Loans Company figures. The 2007 figure does include loans taken out to pay the recently abolished Graduate Endowment.

"These shocking figures highlight how little Labour actually did for students during their eight years in power," the Central Scotland MSP said yesterday. "Labour came to power in 1997 with the mantra of 'education, education, education'. Instead we got tuition fees, tuition fees, tuition fees – debt, debt and more debt. There are obviously other barriers to education, but it is clear that mounting debt is a massive deterrent."

The averages include students who did not graduate.

Neil said the top priority should be to make education accessible to all. "Graduation should mark the end of a student's financial worries – not the beginning of them. That's why students widely welcomed the SNP's abolition of the Graduate Endowment – a back-door tuition fee which did nothing in terms of investment in further education.

"It's astonishing that a Labour Government could have gone out of their way to make higher education as inaccessible as possible to working-class kids."