All three friends follow the Rethink Repayment campaign on social media. It was set up by Oliver Gardner, who says the first Plan 2 borrowers are grappling with competing financial pressures such as getting on the property ladder and starting families.
“Maybe in your 20s, you can get away without saving as much, potentially. But now people are like, ‘we need the savings to do these big things that we want to do with our lives’,” he says.
The campaign wants a lower Plan 2 interest rate, a lower repayment rate and for the government to reverse that decision to freeze the threshold at £29,385 in England for three years from 2027 – which, while it is not the first freeze, sparked this year’s debate.
Gardner said the government was “engaging much more openly and honestly” but the “the onus is very much on them in the upcoming October budget to take this by the reins” because graduates would not accept “minor tinkering around the edges”.
The DfE said it was “taking decisive action to improve the student finance system and break down barriers to accessing university” by increasing maximum maintenance loans, reintroducing targeted maintenance grants and having “raised the repayment threshold for Plan 2 loans for the first time since 2021”.
“We will continue to look for ways to make the system fairer for students, graduates and taxpayers in a financially sustainable way,” it said.
Lizzy, Libby and Charlotte feel grateful they met back in 2012, and say that if they had their time again they would go back to university.
“I still wouldn’t change my university experience,” says Charlotte, “but would go back and do something different in the sense of my course and my career trajectory? Probably.”