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Universities saving skint students still waiting for loans

Three out of four English universities have had to make emergency payments to students who are still waiting for their loans to come through. Ongoing problems with processing student loans - mainly because of the big increase in applications thanks to the recession - have led to long delays for thousands of students. A …

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Anonymous Coward
FAIL

What's the problem?

My missus got her student loan REALLY quickly. Thing is, she didn't apply for one!

RyokuMas
FAIL

The cause..

"The government has announced an inquiry into the causes of the problems" - the government IS the cause of the problems. Had they not opened the floodgates to all (in the name of "equality", of course) by lowering entrance requirements and dumbing down A-levels, and kept university for the accademical elite, supported by grants where neccessary, there would have been no need for student loans in the first place, therefore this would never have happened.

But no. Can't have it so that there's a place where the brightest people can go to study further and become leaders in their fields. That's far to discriminatory against those less mentally able.

Fail - because that's what this government has done, ever since the grant was axed. And what, no doubt, this enquiry will do - except waste thousands of taxpayers pounds.

irish donkey
FAIL

Students Loans are SCUM

A few years ago I phoned up to complain about my repayment schedule and the way it had been imposed without prior warning.

The reply I got was if you not happy you can always take you custom elsewhere. OH THAT'S RIGHT YOU CAN'T. I GUESS THAT'S JUST TOUGH THEN.

Hardly surprising its all fallen apart with a attitude like that. Nice to see they are still getting their bonuses. I wonder which was paid out first Bonuses or Loans.

Bonuses at a guess........

Invented by the Tories and ruined by NuLabour - Vote for change

David 39
WTF?

Math

"She said the SLC was still receiving 14,000 applications a week, and was clearing them at the rate of 2,000 a day."

7 * 2000 = 14000 wheres the problem?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Some simple maths

"14,000 applications a week, and was clearing them at the rate of 2,000 a day."

Assuming they process applications 7 days a week then they would just be dealing with that weeks new applications - never mind the backlog.

But - The processing team do not work 7 days a week, they work 5 days a week (Mon-Fri 9-5)

Thus the backlog is actually increasing by 4,000 applications each week.

I know their working hours due to having to battle with them this year - although the call centers are open 7 days a week, the processing team only work 9-5 M-F meaning that if you want to speak to someone handling your application your only chance is then or wait 3 days for a call-back from them.

The Original Ash

Other side of the coin...

My g/f works in student finance for a top Uni, and she's had "emergency requests" from students who needed:

- Gym membership

- A new coat (designer label, of course)

- Salon treatment (facial, nails etc)

- Drinking

They have such warped ideas of "essential" it's untrue.

Simon Neill

@math

"She said the SLC was still receiving 14,000 applications a week, and was clearing them at the rate of 2,000 a day."

7 * 2000 = 14000 wheres the problem?

its 5 * 2000 = 10,000 or at most 6 * 10,000. Betting they don't work sundays.

Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
FAIL

They were useless way back when I was a student...

I can't even begin to be bothered explaining the hassle I had with them due to their complete incompetence.

Luckily my fathers lawyer sorted them out for me.

Bluewhelk
FAIL

Re: Math

Bet they don't work weekends though, meaning the backlog increases by 2000 as each week goes by.

Even if they did work the full 7 days the backlog will not be cleared until the applications rate falls.

Anonymous Coward
FAIL

@David39

That would be the backlog that they screwed up over the summer and autumn period!

Anonymous Coward
Grenade

Disgusting

And this is where contrived people start slavering at the mouth when the likes of Belle de Jour pop up ten years later, after they had to pay their way through university through 'other means'

Fucking Student Loans *PETOOIE*

That is all.

the spectacularly refined chap

Saving money

It is the government's secret strategy to save money. Don't pay the extra students on unfunded courses so they are forced to drop out, thus saving the costs of educating them. The whole thing can then be neatly put down to incompetence.

As for the SLC I have also found them to be truly incompetent. I had a protracted dispute and the answers you get back are always based on their procedures and their ways of doing things, rather than their real contractual rights and obligations. In the end I simply said that I wouldn't be paying them until the issue was resolved, and in the mean time they were welcome to sue me if they wished, but I would be pointing out in my defence every instance where they had broken the law handling my case.

That was four or five years ago now. Sure they've sent me to countless debt collectors but a standard letter is all they get. They've never even seriously threatened legal action, and it won't be that much longer before it is time barred.

Anonymous Coward
FAIL

Too many students

That' the simple answer. The raging hard-on Labour has for getting more students into unis (devaluing degrees and lowering education standards in general so more get A*s) is the crux of the problem.

We don't need an army of barely numerate wannabes coming out of uni. We need the highly skilled professionals of the future and that means getting a degree should be hard.

Getting on to a degree course should be hard.

Getting the grades for a degree course should be hard.

Etc.

Many, many skills and trades (highly paid ones too) can be taught outside of the degree system. IT is a prime example. Do you really need a Comp.Sci. degree for high-level programming/webby-work? Do you buggery. The pertinent skills can be taught "on the job" with only a few classroom hours required.

If people want to get into the wild-and-hairy theoretical (new languages etc) then that is the stuff of degrees. Not bread-and-butter IT.

Most building trades are taught through apprenticeship, this is how it should be with IT.

MGJ

Well, that's what happens when you put a pilot in charge

Ralph S-J used to be an airline pilot. If you want to annoy him, call him Ralf as opposed Wraith. Based in Glasgow, but this only affects the English domiciled students. What are your local authorities spending their savings on?

Michael Shaw
Happy

Teaching programming on the job?

Designing a programming apprentiship to turn non programmers into basic, but commercially useful programmers within a few months,so they can continue their apprentiship to learn a broad range of skills within a few years sounds like a real challenge.

Richard 45

Fucktards

If anybody ever wondered where the people with <100 IQ scores end up (apart from vast swathes of the Civil Service) it's here at the SLC and their hangers-on companies. They changed my T&Cs without bothering to tell me. They sold my loan to a different company -- again without bothering to tell me. Trying to get them to understand that they can't do either without informing the customer is illegal, then fail. If the script doesn't says it's true, then it must be. I only eventually got my dispute sorted out through my MP, resulting in a nice grovelling letter from one of the head honchos. Of course, they never learnt from it, and I was back at square one the next year. Oh, and they have their own personal black hole for paperwork. I don't seriously believe that Royal Mail can be so incompetent as to lose three sets of forms sent in the space of a couple of months to the SLC.

Confirm, they don't like being told where they've broken the law and shy away from taking matters to court as they well know that that's when the shit would hit the fan.

Anonymous Coward
Paris Hilton

25 year limit

The split-sidingly hilarious thing about recent student loans is they are automatically wiped out after 25 years. Someone on an average wage will take 23 years to repay an eighteen grand loan anyway and this it assuming ZERO interest, which okay it is this year it won't be forever. So if you don't earn more than the average wage you will never repay your loan!!

True many earn more than the national average but with the sheer number of graduates now and the devalued qualification because of it I bet there will be a huge number of people in this situation.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Bloody students

Get a job.

Anonymous Coward
Grenade

@various

@Students Loans are SCUM

Of course you have a choice. Take out a loan, paying the interest due like everyone else does and then pay off the student loan. Simple really?

@Too many students

Actually us in the IT world prefer it if new employees don't have computer science degrees... It can be quite difficult when they turn up bright eyed and bushy tailed only to find out that they've wasted 3 years learning stuff that has no relevence to the real world of IT.

Anonymous Coward
IT Angle

@AC 12:36

Easy way for IT to fix that - get honest and go back to calling yourself DP.

Then computer science graduates would stop coming near.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

@AC 12:55

But they're used to getting screwed up the a**e- that's the point.

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