In March 2026, UK Parliament's Treasury Committee opened an inquiry into student loans and the taxation of graduates. In the Government's Autumn Budget, a decision was made to freeze the threshold for repayments - the salary level at which you start paying back student loans after graduating. Led by the National Union of Students, the student movement has fought back against this decision.
In May 2026, Kingston Students' Union's response to the inquiry was published. You can read our published submission below or directly on Parliament's website.
If you have any thoughts about student loans, we'd still love to hear from you at representation@kingston.ac.uk.
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This submission has been written by the elected Student Officer team at Kingston Students’ Union (KSU), on behalf of the 19,000 students studying at Kingston University. This includes approximately 13,000 home UG students, most of whom are on either Plan 2 or Plan 5, and approximately 2,000 home PGT students, most of whom are on a Postgraduate Loan. We are glad to have the opportunity to respond to this important inquiry. There are positives with parts of the student loans model. It is crucial that students are given the financial empowerment to access Higher Education. However, as we lay out in this submission, we are deeply concerned with a series of decisions that has resulted in the current crisis we find ourselves in. Students cannot access enough state-funded financial support. The Higher Education is under-subsidised, especially when related to the public good we provide. Upon graduating, many students find themselves locked into loan repayments they felt they were mis-sold on, as the National Union of Students argue. And by freezing all salary payment thresholds, the Government continues to unfairly move the goalposts of the loans, creating real-terms tax rises that stay with most graduates until they reach retirement age.
Should the interest on a student loan be dependent on income?
Regardless of whether interest on a student loan is dependent on income or not, we believe it is paramount that salary thresholds are reviewed regularly in line with inflation. This is a similar issue to the one affecting students accessing maintenance loans: if average salaries increase year-on-year due to inflation, whilst thresholds stay the same, the agreed standard slips. This reduces access to financial support for some of the most financially challenged students, pertinent to students here at Kingston University who rely on this support to access Higher Education. The threshold at which someone starts paying back their student loan and the thresholds at which their interest increases need to be regularly reviewed to maintain the initial agreed standard.
Are interest rates above the rate of inflation on a student loan fair?
No.
What proportion of a student’s university education should be funded by the student versus being subsidised by the state?
We believe the Higher Education sector has a lot to celebrate across the UK, and we are particularly proud of the positive impact everyone affiliated with Kingston University has on our communities. This is even more impressive given the financial strains across the sector, felt in complex ways by all parties. A student’s university education does not just consider the cost of tuition. In November 2025, for a research project into the impact work has on studies at Kingston, KSU ran a survey with 732 respondents (all current Kingston students). Key findings include:
- Of students who are not in paid work alongside their studies, 4.5% stated the reason they are not in paid work is because “I don’t need the income.” 48.1% cited “I need the income, but have been unable to find a job”, 27.1% cited “I need the income, SLTG0278 but do not have the time to work due to my studies”, and 6.8% cited “I need the income, but do not have the time to work due to other responsibilities.” 7.5% respondents cited other reasons.
- For most students, doing paid work alongside their studies is a necessity. 64.9% of respondents stated they do paid work “To pay the bills.”
In August 2024, KSU published a report into the impact of the rising cost-of-living on Kingston University students. Surveying 234 students in January 2024, we found that:
- Most students (76.3%) were very concerned or concerned about managing financially, when asked about managing their cost-of-living and income. 2.1% stated they were not concerned at all.
- Almost half of students (47.5%) reported they felt their income was not sufficient to cover their living costs.
- We asked students to briefly describe how the rising cost-of-living had impacted their life. The most common phrases were ‘stressful’, ‘difficult’, ‘anxiety inducing’, ‘expensive’, and ‘intense’.
Meanwhile, both KSU and the university continue to operate beyond our means. The university provides many high-impact bursaries and other forms of financial support to students, particularly from low-income households. As a charity predominantly funded by a block grant, KSU empowers over a thousand student leaders build key skills that help them grow as people and prospective graduates entering the job market.
This context is relevant in highlighting the importance for the state to invest more heavily in the Higher Education sector. Education is a public good, and the state should therefore provide more funds through progressive taxation. We want to see a fairer balance between state and student payments, lifting the burden of repayment from the poorest graduates meanwhile providing greater financial stability to the sector. Alleviating the severity of financial pressures currently placed on all parties within the sector would enable students, students’ unions, and universities to sustainably ensure the public good we provide continues to grow.
We also want to draw attention to the Master’s loans system, designed to help with course fees and living costs. Most home PGT students at Kingston receive £12,858 throughout the duration of their course. After paying for course fees, this leaves very little for living costs. Considering the average cost of student rent in London is £793 per month (National Student Accommodation Survey 2026), it is no wonder that most Kingston students struggle to manage financially. The Master’s loan system should be an access mechanism for advanced study, and we are glad this provision is in place. However, coupled with the Government’s own projections suggest PG loans make money for the Treasury, we are deeply concerned with how the loans system are currently being implemented. We believe these projections are evidence of under-subsidy; a series of political choices that enticed thousand into loan sharing agreements that fail to provide the appropriate financial support when a student and creates anxiety-inducing debt figures that most will never see decreased after graduating. At the very least, students should be able to access more in loans to help with course fees and living costs and the repayment threshold should be increased.
Does the process around student loans provide enough information, in a clear and fair form, given that this may be the first credit contract for many people?
In the process of creating this submission, we spoke with Course Reps about their experiences with student loans. One student on Plan 5 - a single mother with three dependents - told us about the lack of options available to her when she was applying to university. There is genuine, deep-felt concern that students who take whatever plan is available to them to access higher education have no autonomy or protections when they are due to repay. We asked students if, knowing now how student loans work, whether this might impact the advice they give to others. This student replied that she has already advised her children to explore alternative training and development to avoid lifelong debt. It is concerning that students reflect that their lived experience with student loans negatively impacts the advice they provide to others who have yet to go through higher education.
April 2026