The problems of student debt and loans are mounting

The UK university system is facing trouble on more than a few fronts. Some are struggling full stop as we note talk that they will not be bailed out. That comes on top of the issue of student loans and debt which makes me wonder how useful a degree is these days? Especially at a time of struggling real wages.  Although wages for some do not seem to be a problem. From UK Parliament in June of this year.

A table of vice-chancellors’ salaries in the Times Higher Education in June 2017 showed that Dame Glynis Breakwell, the vice-chancellor of the University of Bath was the highest paid university vice-chancellor in the UK; in 2016-17 she was paid a salary of £451,000. The table showed that vice-chancellors at six other universities also earned over £400,000 in that year.

Average pay was found to be £290,000 including pension contributions. You may recall that the University Superannuation Scheme became a hot topic for a while as there were strikes after suggestions that defined benefits needed to end. That was eventually resolved with higher contributions ( but not as high as originally suggested). Previously the total was 26% of salary split 18% employer and 8% employee.

The panel recommended that DB pensions could continue to be offered with contributions rising to 29 per cent — significantly lower than the 36.6 per cent from April 2020 proposed by USS, based on the valuation as it stands. ( Financial Times)

As an aside it was a shame that the Bank of England was not contacted as its research could be used to show that in fact such pensions have benefited from its policies. In spite of course of that fact that its Chief Economist Andy Haldane confessed to not understanding them. Oh well!

Moving on, payoffs to Vice-Chancellors had become an issue such as the £429,000 payoff at Bath Spa, £230,000 at the University of Sussex, and £186,876 at Birmingham City University. Coming back to pay the HM Parliament research showed that Vice-Chancellor pay had risen at an annual rate of 3.2% when other academic staff were restricted to 0.7%.

Student Debt

A glimpse of a potential future can be seen in the United States. Last night the US Federal Reserve updated us on total student debt at the end of the third quarter and it was US $1.563 trillion. One perspective is provided by the number below it for total motor loans which is a relatively mere £1.142.8 trillion. In terms of past comparisons the number for 2013 was £1.145.6 trillion for US student loans.

Noah Opinion on Bloomberg looked at it like this.

Many educated millennials would likely agree — since 2006, student debt has approximately doubled as a share of the economy……..The increase seems to have paused in the past two years, possibly due to the economic recovery (which allows students and their families to pay more tuition out of current income) and a modest  decline in college enrollment. But the burden is still very large, and interest rates on student-loan debt are fairly high.

His chart shows student debt being around 7.5% of US Gross Domestic Product and I can update his view because unless the US economy is growing at an annual rate of 5.6% then the burden is rising again.

Also the repayment issue is similar to that we have and indeed are experiencing in the UK.

Education researcher Erin Dunlop Velez crunched data that was recently released by the Department of Education, and found that only half of students who went to college in 1995-6 had paid off their loans within 20 years. Given the vast increase in the size of loans since then, repayment rates are likely to be even worse if nothing is done. Velez also found that default rates are considerably higher than had been thought.

There is another familiar feature.

What’s more, student lending has almost certainly contributed to the rise in college tuition, which has outpaced overall inflation by a lot. When the government lends students money, or encourages private lenders to do the same, it increases demand for college, pushing up the price.

In the  UK a lot of the inflation came in one go.

In the 2012/13 academic year, students beginning their studies could be charged up to a maximum fee of £9000 for first year courses compared with a maximum of £3375 in
2011/12 ( Office for National Statistics).

Whilst the weighting for university fees is low the substantial rise had an impact on the overall numbers.

In total, university tuition fees for UK and EU students added 0.31 percentage points to the change in CPI
inflation between September and October 2012. This was the largest component of the rise in the headline rate from 2.2 to 2.7%.

The CPI measure was particularly affected as it includes international and European Union students whereas the RPI only has UK ones meaning that the weight is around three times higher. That becomes quite an irony as we note the invariably higher ( ~ 1% per annum) RPI is used in the interest-rate on student loans. The road from being “not a national statistic” to being useful is short when it is something the public are paying or indeed Bank of England pensioners are receiving.

Comment

Let me start with some welcome good news. The Times Higher Education rankings show Oxford University at number one with Cambridge second and Imperial College ninth. My alma mater the LSE slide in at number 26. So we are getting something right as whilst it feels by hook or by crook our universities are highly regarded around the world. I think we do that a lot as we focus on issues ( the impact of the PPE degree course at Oxford on our political class) and maybe lose vision on the wider picture. Our institutions are often highly regarded around the world.

Also many more people are going to university as this from Gil Wyness at the LSE points out.

The UK has dramatically increased the supply of graduates over the last four decades. The proportion of workers with higher education has risen from only 4.7% in 1979 to 28.5% in 2011 (Machin, 2014). Rather than this enormous increase in supply reducing the value of a degree, the pay of graduates relative to non-graduates has risen over the same period: from 39% to 56% for men and from 52% to 59% for women).

However the issue of pay is a complex one as of course overall pay growth has slowed which if the workforce has become better qualified looks even worse. Also there is this which needs some revision I would suggest.

The expansion of universities helped raise growth and productivity (Besley and Van Reenen,
2013),

The financing side is much more shambolic though. The upside of the student loans era was supposed to make universities compete more, does anyone believe that now? Next comes the issue that a high interest-rate (6.3%) is used to raise the debt calculated like this by HM Parliament.

Currently more than £16 billion is loaned to around one million higher education students in England each year. The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2018
reached £105 billion. The Government forecasts the value of outstanding loans to be reach around £450 billion (2017-18 prices) by the middle of this century.

No wonder the Bank of England dropped consumer loans from its credit figures! But more fundamentally debt is supposed to be repaid and yet we know most of this never will be. Yet along the way it will affect those who have it should they look to buy a house or have other borrowing.

The average debt among the first major cohort of post-2012 students to become liable for repayment was £32,000. The Government expects that 30% of current full-time undergraduates who take out loans will repay them in full.

The anthem for this comes from Twenty One Pilots.

Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out
Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out