Student loans aren’t the only thing that grads have been missold

Graduates are angry. With the cost of repaying student loans spiralling, and far fewer entry-level jobs available for recent university-leavers, some now argue they were sold a lie. The myth that loans for higher education are an ‘investment’ with a guaranteed return – the so-called ‘graduate premium’ – has been exploded. But this is far from the worst way in which students have been deceived.

In England, those who started university and took out student loans between 2012 (when higher tuition fees were introduced) and 2022 are finding out that they have a lot more debt than they expected. It’s not just the £53,000 the average student now borrows to cover tuition fees and living expenses that they have to repay. Graduates in this cohort are charged interest rates based on RPI (the Retail Price Index – a measure of inflation some economists criticise as too high), plus up to three per cent on top of that. As inflation has increased in recent years, students with average salaries find they are paying out money each month but never denting the loan balance. Their wages take a hit, but their debt keeps on growing.

Worse still, in last year’s budget, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that from 2027 the salary threshold to begin loan repayments will be frozen at £29,385 per year. This means that, as inflation and wages rise, people will begin repaying loans sooner. On top of all this, the number of graduate jobs available has fallen to a record low, and youth unemployment is at an 11-year high. Graduates who struggle to find any job, let alone a well-paid one, will soon find they are expected to make loan repayments while earning little more than the minimum wage.

Of course, having a degree does not entitle anyone to a cushy job. But graduates are right to point out that they were deceived. For decades, government ministers, university leaders, teachers and high-profile money-saving experts (here’s looking at you, Martin Lewis) essentially told children that student loans were not ‘debt’, but an ‘investment’. They were promised a ‘graduate premium’ – which was, year-after-year, the conveniently round figure of £100,000 over the course of their working life. Now that they are coming to cash in on this investment, many are discovering that the returns just aren’t there.

Graduates have also been victims of a far bigger deception, though one that garners far fewer headlines. Potential students are told that university is about higher education – indeed, this is precisely what their tuition fees are meant to cover. But when they arrive on campus, they discover the true scandal: universities now offer students little that passes for ‘higher education’.

However we choose to measure it, today’s universities do a lot less educating than they did in the past. The time students spend in lectures or seminars has been steadily declining for several years, with less than half now attending classes for more than 11 hours each week. English students ‘have fewer contact hours’ than their Scottish counterparts, despite paying higher fees. When they do see lecturers, students are now more likely to be taught in larger groups than in small tutorials, where it is more difficult to remain anonymous.

Perhaps none of this would matter if students were under pressure to study independently. But they are not. A survey found that undergraduates were spending less time studying both in class and independently, with fewer than half spending more than 11 hours per week swotting up. Lecturers have commented on the tiny number of students who now read whole books. They like to blame smartphones, but one problem is that academics themselves have little expectation that students will read books. Reading lists point students to online extracts, meaning they never have to go near a library.

When it comes to essay-writing, cheating seems to be an open secret. Reports suggest that some students, particularly those from overseas, are paying essay-writing companies to come up with the goods. But many more are relying on AI to provide them with answers. Again, this might not be a problem if universities continued to use traditional pen-and-paper exams. But most do not. ‘Alternative assessment’ is all the rage. Students might be expected to complete group work presentations, make a podcast, keep a reflective journal or answer multiple-choice questions online. This is better for students, the argument goes, because exams and essays are stressful and not relevant to the ‘real world’.

No one is held to account for lower standards because, around the same time as less was starting to be expected of students, grades began to rise. By 2021, the number of first-class degrees awarded had doubled compared with 2011. Now, more than 75 per cent of students get a first or a 2:1, despite teenagers being offered university places with far lower A-level grades than in the past. In 2010, 61 per cent of applicants with three Ds or lower at A-level got a university offer, yet by 2025 this had risen to 75 per cent.

Taken together, this systematic lowering of standards means that it now stretches credulity to describe what’s on offer at universities as ‘higher education’. They trade on the idea that they are delivering quality teaching and learning experiences when, in reality, the few hard-working lecturers that still seek to maintain high academic standards do so in defiance of their institution’s requirements.

Forget graduate debt and loan repayments, it’s the lack of education that’s the real misselling scandal in our universities.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com.