Levitate Student: Tuition Fee Debate - No Fee Fuss

If nothing were to change with the current Higher Education Funding system apart from it being Tuition Fee free what might change in your student loan repayment?

Use the Money Saving Expert Student Finance Calculator - read all the information about built in assumptions.

Pick a realistic salary above the £21K repayment threshold 

Play with the amounts including and annual tuition fee loan and leaving it out while keeping the living cost loan in place

For example we used 

£22,000 starting graduate salary 
a 3 year course
an annual Maintenance Loan of £8,000
£9,250 annual tuition fee

which using the default built in assumptions gave a repayment of

£22,560 over the 30 years of continuous employment. 

Taking the fee loan out of the calculation made no difference, nor did it when we increased the starting salary to £25,000. 

While calculators can only give an indication of repayment, they do help to give a better understanding of the long term repayment against the borrowing. 


Play with the figures yourself and remember that no tuition fee does not necessarily mean less repayment back to the public purse if the system of living cost loans remains unchanged.

If the system remains the same then the main beneficiaries of no tuition fees would be those who don't require a living cost loan (arguably the better off).