[dan-robertson]

The system in the U.K. is income-based repayment with automatic forgiveness after 30 years and an interest rate linked to inflation and income (your interest rate is up to 300bp higher if your income is higher). In some sense this is good because it avoids defaults or unmanageable repayments, but it can be a bit unegalitarian in how different people are affected: those with low incomes are ok but they have low incomes, those with particularly high incomes get to pay the loans off quickly and so don’t have much interest whereas those who follow a more common or somewhat good career progression will end up paying the loan off slowly with a lot of extra income. Furthermore, those people who had more family support would have lower principals and so would pay off less. So it comes out a bit like a graduate tax but borne most by people with middle incomes.