Nearly Half of Graduates Say They Would Not Take Out a Student Loan Again
New Obsurvant polling finds only half of graduates felt properly informed when they chose university, and that confidence with numbers was the single biggest factor in whether they understood what their loan would cost
Key Takeaways
- Polling by Obsurvant, reported on 25 July 2026, found nearly half of graduates who took out a student loan would not do so if they had their time again.
- Only half of graduates felt properly informed when they chose to go to university, and just 54% felt their time at university had prepared them for big financial decisions.
- Confidence with numbers was the strongest single factor. Among graduates who felt strongly confident about maths, 72% said they felt informed about the long-term cost of their loan. Among those who were not confident with numbers, only 21% did.
- The single most misunderstood fact about a UK student loan is that what you repay is set by your income, not by your balance. On Plan 2 you repay 9% of everything you earn over £29,385, whether you owe £20,000 or £80,000.
- No sample size or fieldwork dates were published alongside the reporting, so treat “nearly half” as a headline finding rather than a precise measurement. We set out what is and is not known in the methodology note below.
In this article
What the Survey Found
New polling by the research company Obsurvant has found that nearly half of graduates who took out a student loan would not do so if they had their time again. The research was reported on 25 July 2026 by the Daily Mirror, in a piece bylined Alexander Brown, and carried by AOL.
What makes the polling more interesting than a straightforward regret figure is what sits underneath it. The survey did not simply ask graduates whether they were happy with their degree. It asked whether they felt informed at the point they made the decision, and then looked at what separated the people who said yes from the people who said no.
The finding that matters most
Confidence with numbers was the single biggest factor shaping how informed students felt. Of those who described themselves as strongly confident about maths, 72% said they felt informed about the long-term cost of their loan. Of those who were not confident with numbers, just 21% did. That is a gap of 51 percentage points, and it means a numerate school leaver was more than three times as likely to understand what they were signing.
The Innumeracy Tax
Lord Agnew, a former Treasury minister and Chair of the Numeracy for Life Committee, framed the finding in terms of a hidden charge falling on the people least able to see it coming.
“Nearly half of borrowers now say they wish they had never taken out their student loan, and confidence with numbers is the clearest reason why: those let down by their school maths were far more likely to be in the dark about the true cost of their debt.”
“That is the Innumeracy Tax: a charge levied not on income or spending, but on the people least equipped to spot it, paid in decades of repayments they never understood. This is not a theoretical problem.”
“Each September, another wave of eighteen-year-olds puts their name to the biggest financial commitment of their young lives, without ever having been shown how to weigh up what it will actually cost them.”
“For some, the gamble pays off. But far too many find themselves, a few years on, saddled with repayments stretching towards retirement and a qualification that has not opened the doors they were told it would.”
Lord Agnew, former Treasury minister and Chair of the Numeracy for Life Committee
The phrase “repayments stretching towards retirement” is not rhetorical. A Plan 5 borrower who started an undergraduate course in England from September 2023 onwards has a 40-year write-off period. Someone who graduates at 21 and starts repaying the following April will be in their sixties before the balance is cleared, unless they repay it in full first.
What We Know About the Research
We think it is worth being precise about the evidence base here, because a regret figure is an easy headline and a hard thing to measure well. Here is what the published reporting does and does not tell us.
What is stated
- Obsurvant is the polling company behind the research
- The findings were reported as a Daily Mirror exclusive on 25 July 2026
- The headline figures: nearly half would not borrow again, only half felt properly informed, 54% felt prepared for big financial decisions
- The numeracy split: 72% of the confident felt informed, against 21% of the not confident
What is not stated
- No sample size was published in the reporting
- No fieldwork dates were published
- No breakdown by repayment plan, graduation year or age
- No margin of error, and no indication of how the sample was weighted
How to read it
Two cautions. First, “nearly half” is a rounded description, not a measured percentage, so it should not be quoted as though it were 49% or 48%. Second, the link between numeracy and feeling informed is a correlation. Confidence with numbers tends to travel with other things, including school type, household income and the quality of careers advice a pupil received, and the reporting does not separate those out.
None of that makes the finding weak. A 51 percentage point gap is very large, and it points at something real. It does mean the honest summary is that the research is a strong signal about financial understanding rather than a precise measurement of graduate regret.
The Thing Borrowers Say They Were Never Told
If half of graduates say they did not understand the long-term cost, the useful response is not another headline. It is to explain the mechanism they say nobody explained. It comes down to one idea that runs against almost every instinct people bring from other kinds of borrowing.
Your repayment is set by your income, not by your balance
A mortgage or a car loan works backwards from the amount owed: bigger debt, bigger monthly payment. A UK student loan does not. Your monthly deduction is a fixed percentage of your earnings above a threshold. Two people on identical salaries repay identical amounts even if one owes £20,000 and the other owes £80,000.
The five rules that actually govern what you pay
1. You repay a percentage of income above a threshold
On Plan 1, Plan 2, Plan 4 and Plan 5 it is 9% of everything you earn above your threshold. On a postgraduate loan, also called Plan 3, it is 6% above £21,000. Earn below the threshold and you repay nothing at all.
2. It is deducted per pay period, not per year
Through PAYE, your employer applies the monthly equivalent of the threshold. For Plan 2 that is £29,385 divided by 12, which is £2,448.75 a month. For Plan 5 it is £25,000 divided by 12, or £2,083.33 a month. This is why a one-off bonus can trigger a large deduction in a single month even if your annual pay stays below the threshold.
3. Interest changes your balance, not your monthly payment
Interest is currently anchored to a 4.1% RPI basis, the March 2026 figure that applies from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027. Plan 2 would run from 4.1% up to an uncapped 7.1% depending on income, with a 6% cap applying since 1 September 2026 for the 2026/27 academic year in England and Wales for Plan 2 and Plan 3. Plan 5 charges RPI only, with no margin, so 4.1%. Whatever the rate, it does not alter the 9% deduction on your payslip.
4. Repayments stop if your income falls
Lose your job, drop to part-time hours, take unpaid leave or move to a lower-paid role, and the deduction shrinks or stops automatically. There is no arrears process, no default and no bailiff. That is the feature that makes the product genuinely unlike commercial debt, and it is worth a great deal to anyone whose earnings are unstable.
5. Whatever is left on the write-off date is cancelled
Plan 1 is written off after 25 years, Plan 2 after 30 years, Plan 4 after 30 years and Plan 5 after 40 years. On that date the outstanding balance disappears, no matter how big it is. Your write-off date is therefore a more important number than your balance.
Thresholds and write-off periods for 2026-27
| Plan | Threshold | Rate above it | Written off after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan 1 | £26,900 | 9% | 25 years |
| Plan 2 | £29,385 | 9% | 30 years |
| Plan 4 (Scotland) | £33,795 | 9% | 30 years |
| Plan 5 | £25,000 | 9% | 40 years |
| Postgraduate (Plan 3) | £21,000 | 6% | 30 years |
Not sure which plan you are on? It is decided by where and when you started your course, not by which university you attended. Work it out with our which student loan plan am I on guide, then read repayment thresholds explained for the current figures on every plan.
What You Actually Repay: Worked Examples
Here is the arithmetic that the survey suggests half of graduates never saw. Each figure below is 9% of the amount by which the salary exceeds the plan threshold, using the 2026-27 thresholds of £29,385 for Plan 2 and £25,000 for Plan 5. Monthly figures are the annual amount divided by twelve.
| Salary | Plan 2 per year | Plan 2 per month | Plan 5 per year | Plan 5 per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £28,000 | £0 | £0 | £270.00 | £22.50 |
| £30,000 | £55.35 | £4.61 | £450.00 | £37.50 |
| £35,000 | £505.35 | £42.11 | £900.00 | £75.00 |
| £45,000 | £1,405.35 | £117.11 | £1,800.00 | £150.00 |
| £60,000 | £2,755.35 | £229.61 | £3,150.00 | £262.50 |
Figures are gross annual salary before pension contributions and other adjustments, and assume a single PAYE employment for a full tax year. Real payslip deductions are rounded to whole pounds each pay period, so your annual total may differ by a few pounds.
The counter-intuitive part: Plan 5 borrowers, who are the most recent cohort and typically owe the most, repay more each month than Plan 2 borrowers on the same salary, because the threshold is lower. The size of the debt has nothing to do with it. Compare the two plans side by side in our Plan 2 vs Plan 5 comparison, or run your own salary through the monthly repayment calculator.
Does Your Balance Actually Matter?
For most borrowers, the answer is no, and this is the point at which the loan stops behaving like debt in any familiar sense.
Your balance only becomes relevant if you are on track to clear it in full before your write-off date. If you are not, the balance is a number that grows on a statement while your repayments carry on being determined solely by your salary, and then it is cancelled. Watching it rise is unpleasant, but it does not cost you a penny more.
A static illustration
Take a graduate earning £35,000 who never receives a pay rise. On Plan 2 they repay £505.35 a year. Across the full 30 years to write-off that totals £15,160.50. On Plan 5 they repay £900 a year, and across the full 40 years that totals £36,000.
Now consider what a current student is borrowing. For a three-year course starting in 2026/27, tuition at the maximum of £9,790 a year comes to £29,370. A maintenance loan at the full rate of £10,830 a year for a student living away from home outside London adds £32,490. That is £61,860 before any interest at all, and up to £71,775 for a student on the London rate of £14,135 a year.
Both illustrations assume a flat salary and ignore interest, so neither is a forecast. They exist to show the shape of the thing: for a borrower on a modest, stable income, the total repaid over the entire life of the loan can be a fraction of what was borrowed, and the difference is written off. That is the part nobody explains to eighteen-year-olds, in either direction.
When the balance does matter
- You are a consistently high earner and on course to repay in full
- You borrowed a small amount, for example a one-year top-up or a shortened course
- You are close to your write-off date with a small balance left
- You are considering a voluntary lump sum and want to know if it would ever pay for itself
When it does not
- You will not clear the balance before write-off, which is the majority position on Plan 2 and Plan 5
- Your income is modest or interrupted by caring, illness or part-time work
- You are worried about your credit file, which student loans do not appear on
- You are tempted to overpay purely to make the statement number smaller
Before you overpay a penny: check whether you are actually on track to clear the balance. If you are not, a voluntary payment is money handed over for nothing. Use the loan write-off checker to find your write-off date, the total loan cost calculator to see your lifetime total, and the overpayment calculator to test whether a lump sum would ever pay for itself. Our guide on whether you should overpay walks through the decision in full.
The Wider Backlash
The Obsurvant polling lands in the middle of the most sustained criticism the English student finance system has faced since fees tripled in 2012.
The National Union of Students
Earlier in 2026 the NUS likened the government to a “loan shark”, saying students were “mis-sold mortgage-sized debts that politicians can raise repayments on at the drop of a hat”. That last clause is the substantive complaint: the terms can be varied after the loan is taken out.
Martin Lewis
The MoneySavingExpert founder has repeatedly described Plan 2 student loans as a “breach of contract”, pointing to the repeated freezing of a threshold that borrowers were told would rise. We covered his exchange with the Chancellor in our report on the Plan 2 threshold freeze clash.
The Treasury Committee
On 7 July 2026 the Committee concluded that government communications comparing student loan repayments to phone contracts or cinema tickets “amounted to mis-selling”, and that students were not told clearly enough that loan terms could be changed retrospectively. Its inquiry drew more than 52,000 survey responses. Read our full write-up of the Treasury Committee student loans report.
The threshold freeze, and why it compounds the problem
Graduates who took out a loan between September 2012 and July 2023 are on Plan 2 and repay 9% of everything earned over £29,385. That threshold will be frozen from 2027 until 2030 instead of being uprated, contrary to what was promised when Plan 2 loans were announced in 2010.
A freeze is invisible on a payslip. No rate changes, no new line appears, but as wages rise and the threshold stands still, a larger slice of income falls above it every year. It is the clearest example of the thing the survey is about: a cost that is real, ongoing and almost impossible to spot without doing the arithmetic yourself. Our Plan 2 threshold freeze guide sets out the mechanics.
On tuition fees: the maximum full-time tuition fee for 2026/27 is £9,790, up £255 from the £9,535 maximum that applied in 2025/26, a rise of 2.67%. Coverage of the survey noted that fees are on course to be closer to £10,000. Note that some reporting still quotes £9,535 as the current cap; that figure was the 2025/26 maximum and has since been superseded.
What To Do If This Is You
Regret is not actionable. Understanding is. If you are one of the graduates who signed without knowing what you were signing, these are the five things worth establishing, in order.
1. Confirm which plan you are on
Everything else follows from this. It is set by where you studied and the year your course started. If you did a postgraduate course as well, you may be repaying two loans at once, at 9% and 6%.
2. Find your write-off date
Usually counted from the April after you left your course. This single date tells you more about the real cost of your loan than the balance ever will.
3. Work out whether you will ever repay in full
Project your realistic earnings to your write-off date. If the total you would repay falls short of the balance plus interest, you are a write-off borrower and the balance is noise.
4. Check your payslip is correct
Deductions on the wrong plan are common, particularly after changing jobs. Being on the wrong plan can mean paying too much for years without noticing. Compare the deduction on your payslip against the worked examples above.
5. Only then decide about overpaying
Overpaying is a good idea for a minority of borrowers and a waste of money for everyone else. It is the last question to answer, not the first, and it depends entirely on the answer to step three.
If you are choosing now rather than looking back: our answer to is university worth the debt works through the decision on the numbers, and how student loans work in the UK covers the system end to end. If your worry is the opposite one, start with what happens if I never earn enough to repay.
Sources
- AOL, carrying the Daily Mirror report by Alexander Brown, “Nearly half of graduates who took out a student loan would not do it again”, 25 July 2026. Source of the Obsurvant survey findings and the quotes from Lord Agnew. aol.co.uk
- Treasury Committee news release, “Government has moral obligation to reverse freezing of student loans repayment threshold”, 7 July 2026. Source of the mis-selling conclusion and the 52,000 survey responses. committees.parliament.uk
- GOV.UK, “Repaying your student loan: what you pay”. Source of the repayment thresholds, the 9% and 6% rates and the write-off periods. gov.uk
- GOV.UK, “Student finance for undergraduates: new full-time students”. Source of the tuition fee cap and the maintenance loan rates for 2026/27. gov.uk
Frequently Asked Questions
Was my student loan mis-sold?▼
On 7 July 2026 the Treasury Committee concluded that government communications comparing student loan repayments to phone contracts or cinema tickets amounted to mis-selling, and that students were not told clearly enough that loan terms could be changed retrospectively. That is a judgement about conduct, not a legal ruling. There is no compensation scheme and no route to reclaim repayments, so be wary of any firm offering to do so on your behalf. The practical value in the finding is that it confirms you were not being slow if the terms were unclear to you.
Do I have to pay back my student loan if I never earn enough?▼
No. If your income never rises above your threshold, you never make a repayment, and the entire balance is cancelled on your write-off date. The thresholds for 2026-27 are £26,900 on Plan 1, £29,385 on Plan 2, £33,795 on Plan 4, £25,000 on Plan 5 and £21,000 on a postgraduate loan. Nothing is added to the amount you owe as a penalty, there is no default, and student loans do not appear on your credit file.
Does my student loan balance actually matter?▼
Only if you are on track to clear it before your write-off date. Your monthly deduction is 9% of income above your threshold regardless of whether you owe £20,000 or £80,000, so for anyone who will not repay in full, the balance never touches what leaves their payslip and is cancelled at the end. If you are a consistently high earner, or borrowed a small amount, the balance and the interest rate both matter a great deal. Work out which group you are in before you make any decision based on the number.
How much will I repay each month on a £35,000 salary?▼
On Plan 2 you repay 9% of the £5,615 you earn above the £29,385 threshold, which is £505.35 a year or about £42 a month. On Plan 5 you repay 9% of the £10,000 you earn above the £25,000 threshold, which is £900 a year or £75 a month. On Plan 1 the threshold is £26,900, and on Plan 4 it is £33,795. A postgraduate loan is charged separately at 6% above £21,000, so if you hold both you pay both.
Is university still worth it if nearly half of graduates regret borrowing?▼
The survey measures regret about the loan, not the value of the degree, and those are different questions. The honest answer is that it depends on the course, the institution and the earnings that follow, because the cost of the loan scales with what you go on to earn. A useful way to frame it is that the loan is closer to a time-limited deduction from higher earnings than to a debt, so the real question is whether the degree raises your earnings enough to justify three years out of the workforce. Our guide to whether university is worth the debt works through that calculation.
Can I cancel my student loan now that I regret taking it out?▼
No. Once a loan has been drawn down it cannot be cancelled or handed back, and regret is not a ground for cancellation. The balance is written off only on your write-off date, which is 25 years after you became liable to repay on Plan 1, 30 years on Plan 2, Plan 4 and a postgraduate loan, and 40 years on Plan 5. It is also cancelled on death or on permanent disability that stops you working. You can repay the balance voluntarily at any time, but for most borrowers that means paying money they would never otherwise have paid.
Related Resources
Monthly Repayment Calculator
See exactly what comes off your payslip on any plan and any salary
Loan Write-Off Checker
Find the date your balance is cancelled, the number that matters most
How Student Loans Work
The full system explained, from application to write-off
Is University Worth the Debt?
The decision worked through on the numbers rather than the headlines
Repayment Thresholds Explained
Current thresholds on every plan and how they are applied
Should I Overpay My Loan?
When a voluntary payment saves money and when it is wasted
Student Loan Calculator UK Editorial Team
Editorial Team
This page is maintained by the Student Loan Calculator UK editorial team, checked against GOV.UK and Student Loans Company guidance. Read more about our editorial approach.