How the government became a student loan shark

The News Agents

Friday, 6 February 2026 - 51 minutes

Imagine a loan where the Government sets the terms. It can change the terms at any time, and you have no recourse to alter them yourself.

A loan designed so most people never clear it, but pay for it anyway. Not because they failed, but because that’s how it was built.

This is the system successive British governments have built. In this episode of The News Agents, we examine the relations of our student loan system and ask how can it be that the UK government has built a system that you might say would make a loan shark blush?

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