Just over one in ten Warwick graduates have paid off tuition fees in full, figures show

Just 13% of graduates from the University of Warwick have paid off their student tuition fees in full, new figures have suggested.

Data requested from the Department for Education by The Sunday Times found that a significant majority of students at British universities had not completed repayments of tuition fee debt.

At the country’s highest-performing universities, students boasted the highest rates of loan return, with 1 in 4 Oxbridge graduates who had taken out loans since their introduction in 2006 having repaid them by 2022.

At other institutions, however, less than 1% had managed this same feat. At the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, the university with the lowest rate of debt repayment, just 0.3% of students had succeeded in paying off their tuition fees in full.

At Warwick, the sixth-highest performing university for this figure, the rate still stood at just 13.5%.

We need to be honest with students about the fact that not all universities boost their earnings

Sam Bidwell, Economist, Adam Smith Institute

The figures reveal a huge disparity between higher- and lower-level institutions around how quickly students can pay off their debts. It is likely as well to reignite conversations around the usefulness of poorer-performing universities for students, when measured against their financial cost, compared to vocational or non-traditional paths of higher education.

Sam Bidwell, an economist at the Adam Smith Institute, said: “We need to be honest with students about the fact that not all universities boost their earnings.”

Currently, students who take out tuition fee loans in September of this year will have to begin paying off their loans once they earn over £25,000 a year. If, after 40 years, the remaining balance has not been repaid, the outstanding value will be written off.

University has been an expensive process since tuition fees were introduced, and many students understandably want to avoid the prospect of being worse off after having left.

With an economic downturn in the UK and a corresponding rise in the cost-of-living, paying off tuition fees will likely become an increasingly difficult process for past, current, and prospective students.

This factor may make the choice to attend university more of an option rather than a necessity in future.