How do you solve a problem like student loans?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business, Investing, News, Business News

4.4 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Student loans look like another mess that has reached a tipping point in Britain's shonky financial system.
There are three different types of student loan plan that graduates could currently be on and one of them offers a particularly bad deal.
Those who took out Plan 2 student loans, between 2012 and 2022, suffered fees being hiked to £9,000, face interest rates of RPI plus 3 per cent, and have seen the repayment threshold above which they lose 9 per cent of their income bounce around at the whim of governments.
Meanwhile, lots of graduates are staring down the barrel of decades of a big extra chunk coming out of their wages, but then never actually clearing the debt before it gets written off after 30 years.
As the reality bites of the student loans they signed up to at 18 - for an average post university debt of £50,000 - without properly realising the consequences, many late 20 and 30somethings are increasingly angry.
Do they have a point and what can we do? On this week's podcast, Georgie Frost, Helen Crane and Simon Lambert talk student loans, what might happen, what we could do - and who should pay for university.
Plus, what does the Bank of England holding rates mean for borrowers and savers.
For those who aren't losing their spare cash to a student loan and have got on the property ladder, should you overpay your mortgage?
The man who got his mortgage paid off in four years - and how he did it.
What on earth is happening to bitcoin and why is it crashing?
And finally, what are the rules on flexible Isas and putting money back in?

Email us hello@dmgmedia.co.uk

Text us 020 7938 6000.

Hosts: Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Helen Crane

Producer: Georgie Frost

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast, sponsored by Charles Stanley Direct.
0:06.0	I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Simon Lamber today is Helen Crane.
0:10.0	And coming up, student loans.
0:12.0	The slow motion car crash we've been warning about for years looks close to impact.
0:17.0	How we reached the point of no return and what happens next. Elsewhere, the Bank of England held interest rates, but it was a knife-edged decision.
0:24.8	What does it mean for your money and where will they head next?
0:28.0	Plus, what is happening with Bitcoin?
0:30.1	Why now might be the time to overpay your mortgage?
0:32.8	Should you boost your aviose and self-frages gets a dressing down with Crane back on the case.
0:39.4	Don't forget your staff to date with all the latest breaking money news.
0:42.0	Just go to this ismoney.co.uk or download the app.
0:46.2	But first, have students been missold their loans?
0:50.1	That is the question all over social and indeed traditional media at the moment.
0:55.8	The row has completely blown up.
0:58.2	But why and what will happen next?
1:00.9	Now, Helen, as the youngest here, confidently youngest, student loans, what are we talking about here? It's getting increasingly rare that I'm the
1:14.1	youngest person in a room, so I'm loving that, Georgie. That's great. Why you come on,
1:21.1	we make you feel young. I know. So student loans, so this has been bubbling away for quite a while, I think. And the reason
1:30.2	it's been happening this week is that someone has kind of spoken out again. So this is the former
1:37.7	director of the office of students, a man called John Blake. So he stood down last month and he's
1:43.5	kind of spoken out about the
1:45.2	unfairness of the student loan system. So that's why it's sort of on the news gender again this
	...

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