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Comment by AlexTWithBeard | Hacker News Reader

I know that German universities are generally free, while, for example, their UK counterparts charge around 10,000 GBP a year.

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The tuition fee in the UK isn't really a fee at all, at least for most domestic students. In practice, it's more like a graduate tax. Student loans are only repayable if you're earning over £25,725 per year. Your repayments are 9% of your income over that threshold. Your loan is automatically forgiven after 30 years. Because of these terms, the vast majority of students never fully repay their loan.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tui...

That's sad though. This means that most students never earn more than 25k per year, even if they studied..

Actually, if we assume the previously posted £10,000/year, and three years for a Bachelor's they'd have a £30,000 debt. Assuming no interest, since it's only the amount over £25,725 that's taxed they'd have to average £25,725+((£30,000/30)/.09), or £36,836.11, over 30 years to fully repay, which I think is a much more reasonable number outside of HCOL areas.

I'm not sure if they account for inflation or have any fixed interest on the loans. 30 years without any would be pretty crazy.

Interest rates vary depending on how much you earn. https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

It's basically inflation + 3% if you're earning more than £45k/yr+.

That makes a lot of sense, thanks.

They have above interest earnings for higher earners, and a lot of students take out loans of nearly twice the size to pay living costs, so a lot of people whose earnings average over £40k in 2019 money won't pay all their loans back either.

Nitpick: you can't really generalize about education in the UK as Scotland has a completely different system to England and Wales (and I don't know about NI).

For example, tuition fees at Scottish universities are "free" (i.e. paid for by the Scottish Government) for Scottish residents and people from other EU countries (but not the rest of the UK).

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