NI student loan debt hits almost £3.3bn

One in six Northern Ireland students have repaid their loans

Northern Ireland's outstanding student debt stands at almost £3.3bn.

The total tuition fee and maintenance loan debt has risen 10% since last year when it stood at just under £3bn.

Only about one in six people in Northern Ireland have fully repaid their student loans.

The 2017/18 statistics on how much student debt people in Northern Ireland owe and how much they have repaid have been published by the Student Loans Company.

This is the government-owned body that pays and collects tuition fees and living cost loans to universities and students.

In total, 243,000 Northern Ireland people have taken out loans to cover tuition fees and living costs since the current loans system began in 1998/99.

But only 32,300 have fully repaid their loans and 43,000 have not yet had to start repaying them.

Students only start repaying loans when they have finished their course or reached the earnings threshold to begin repayment, which stands at £18,330 a year or £352 a week.

The more they earn, the bigger a proportion of their loan they repay.

Year-on-year rise

Those who began to repay in 2018 owe £22,440 on average, £1,500 more than those who began to repay last year.

In 2017/18, Northern Irish students borrowed almost £208m in tuition fee loans and £134m in maintenance loans, a rise of over 4% on 2016/17.

For the first time, postgraduate students in Northern Ireland were also able to borrow to pay tuition fees, with their loans totalling £3.7m.

Some students in Northern Ireland from low income backgrounds can also get a grant to help pay for living costs.

Loan debt is written off in Northern Ireland if a former student has not cleared their debt within 25 years of becoming eligible to repay.

Loan system warning

The vast majority of students referred to in the Student Loan Company's figures are from Northern Ireland, although EU students studying in Northern Ireland are also included.

The total amount of loans they still owe is dwarfed by the amount owed by people in England where tuition fees are higher.

English student debt stands at almost £105bn in 2017/18, which has led to a number of warnings about the long-term cost of the student loans system, most recently from a House of Lords committee.