Clash of the manifestos: university fees

"Our reforms to university funding mean you do not have to pay anything towards tuition while studying, and only start paying back if you earn over £21,000 per year"—Conservative manifesto

"Students in England do not have to pay anything until they are earning over £21,000 per year […] only high-earning graduates pay their tuition fees in full"—Liberal Democrat manifesto

"The Government's decision to triple university tuition fees leaves young people […] starting their working lives burdened by £44,000 of debt"—Labour manifesto

The trade-off involved in allowing tuition fees to rise, while also putting up the threshold after which they have to be paid back, does seem to mean more debt for students. Fewer will pay it all off, and poorer graduates will repay less than previously.

In 2012 the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition raised the cap on tuition fees for undergraduate courses to £6,000, rising to £9,000 in "exceptional circumstances". The majority of universities are charging £9,000.

English-domiciled students start making repayments once they earn £21,000 (a threshold that is intended to be linked to income growth) rather than £15,000 as before. They are charged an above-inflation interest rate if they earn at least £21,000, and their debts are written off 30 years after becoming eligible to repay, rather than 25 years after as before.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said that students under the higher fees system will indeed graduate with £44,035 of debt, in 2014 prices.

It estimates that average total repayments under the new system will be about £22,843.

But over the longer run, the lowest-earning 30% of graduates who studied full-time will repay less under the new system than they would have under the old, according to estimates by the IFS. The remaining 70% are expected to have to pay back more under the new system.

Roughly 73% of graduates will not repay their debt in full, compared with 32% under the old system.

Take the example given by the IFS of an 'average teacher'. Before the 2012 changes that teacher would have repaid around £25,000 in total (in 2014 prices), clearing the debt in full by around age 40.

Under the new system, that teacher will pay back around £42,000 (in 2014 prices), but still won't have repaid in full by their early 50s—at which point they'll have around £25,000 of their remaining debt written off. In contrast, an 'average lawyer' would pay off their debt in their early 40s (contrasted with early 30s under the previous system).

For more information about the impact of the changes, including an outline of tuition fees in the rest of the UK, see our briefing.