Who is paying the price in the student finance debate? | Commercial Awareness Compass #65

Hello everyone and welcome to all about Laws commercial awareness compass. Your weekly guide to thinking like a commercial lawyer in each of the episodes will take one major topic and break it down across three levels. So beginner, intermediate and advanced. So that way you can build your understanding step by step. This isn't just about following the news. It's about developing the mindset law firms look for understanding why events matter to clients and how lawyers add real strategic value. That's commercial awareness in practice. I am Fahika Chowji, a future training lawyer and career changeer. Today I'm joined by Marina and Associate at Dentons, one of the world's largest law firms. Marina, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself? Absolutely. Thank you for that introduction from you. As you said, I am Marina, I am an associate at Dentons based in the London office and I'm in the corporate team. So the corporate team covers a whole range of different areas of corporate laws such as M&A, venture capital, investment funds and I have a slight kind of investment funds leaning. I trained at Dentons, but I was actually up in the Edinburgh office. So I'm just called to qualified, but then I moved down to the London office on qualification and I've been here for about a year and a half. Thank you Marina. It's great to have you with us today and thank you in advance for your time. Today's topic is one we'll feel very close to home for pretty much everyone watching student loans. We're asking the question, are student loans inherently unfair? It's a debate that's never far from the headlines and it sits at the intersection of social policy, finance and law in the way that it gives us a huge amount to explore and really looking forward to getting into this one. As we go through today's session, I'd encourage the audience to focus on how each level builds on the last. At beginner, we'll ask what is this and why does it matter? At intermediate, we're connecting to all the legal and business relevance and at the advanced level, we're thinking strategically like a commercial lawyer. Let's start at the beginning. Marina, before we get into the fairness debate, I want to make sure everyone watching has a clear picture of how the system actually works because the student finance in the UK has some genuinely unusual features that I think a lot of people misunderstand. So kick us off. How do student loans typically work in the UK and what are the key features our listeners should understand? So I think the first place to start is actually to flag that there are lots of different systems all working at the same time, depending on where you grew up, where you went to university, when you went to university, when you graduated. There are so many different elements of the system interacting all together all at once, which makes it inherently quite complicated. To make this a bit simpler in terms of our discussion, I thought best to focus in on England. And so students who are raised in England, live in England, and then go to university in England, and I'm aware that the situation is so different for Scottish students. You go to Scottish universities, they're going for free, so they sit slightly outside of the debate, and I know that the system is slightly different in Northern Ireland as well. So for the purposes of our discussion, I'm going to focus on kind of the English student loan system, just because it is the one that I think is being talked about the most at the moment. There are also different variations within even just the English system, so I think for ease I'll stick to plan two, which is essentially the plan that applies to graduates who went to university between 2012 and 2023. It has since changed in the last couple of years, and I'll touch on that kind of when I think it's relevant, but I will stick to that because I think that gives it the good foundation to talk about what we're getting into today. So focusing on the English system, essentially you've got two strands of the student loan system. You've got the tuition fees, and then you've got the maintenance loan. The tuition fees are paid directly by the government to your university, so as a student, you never see that in your bank account. However, it is a loan that the government has paid on your behalf, so you then do have to repay that. You've got the maintenance loan, and that operates slightly differently, and the amount you get dictated by your household income, but that is money that you do see, so that's intended to help you pay for rent living costs. Again, a whole other debate is whether that is even sufficient these days, given inflation, but you do see that. So your student, your tuition fees and your maintenance loan are then all piled together into one outstanding loan that you then owe back to the government. It's all done via a company called the Student Loans Company, so they administer the loans and deal with collection, but that is essentially how it works. In terms of how you repay that loan, that's where it gets a bit more complicated. Student loans and how you repay them are income contingent, so you only start paying over a specific threshold. So if you earn below that threshold, you don't pay anything. Once you earn over that threshold, it's then a percentage above that threshold that you pay. The interest on those repayments is linked to something called RPI, which is essentially a consumer price index, and so it's in theory supposed to mean that that interest rate only goes up with inflation. Again, more to discuss on that point. And then also there's a set point where it wipes. So we're under the plan two, it's 30 years, so after 30 years of repayments, wherever there is left, if you haven't paid it all off, it's wiped and you don't owe anything else. In more recent years, that's changed to 40 years, which essentially means that for the majority of a person's working life, they are repaying their student loan. And so it's a kind of income-based repayment scheme, which is quite unique in that respect. Right, thank you. That's a really helpful breakdown. So essentially, it's a significant government subsidy built into the system from the outset with all the intricacies intertwined. So building on that, and this is something I know that is directly relevant for anyone preparing for applications or interviews because these terms do come up. What important terms should aspiring lawyers be familiar with when discussing finance arrangements? So I think the one that is probably the most important and comes up a lot in the context of the discussion around the student loan system is interest, and the rate of interest that is being applied. It can be measured in a variety of ways. There's kind of bank of England set rates of interest. Then there's the RPI index, which is in theory linked to kind of consumer prices and inflation. All interest can be a commercially agreed amount. So that's very important because essentially, financing arrangements work because the lender makes a profit based on the interest they receive. They would not necessarily get much out of it if they just got back what they gave you, particularly given inflation is such a hot topic and does reduce the value of the money that you've owed that you've lent, sorry, after a certain amount of time. So interest is really important and it's definitely something that is a key term to any kind of financing arrangement because it will always crop up and particularly when you're thinking about late payments, that's what interest also often bites. So putting aside student loans for a second, if you think about just credit card payments, that is essentially you taking out money on loan from the bank. If you don't pay that back in time, they're going to charge you interest. So interest is key. I also think any kind of repayment term is important. So when do you need to repay the money that you've been lent? How often do you need to repay it? Is there a fixed time or is it on demand? On demand is when the lender can just say at any point or any point after a specific amount of time that they need the money back and you have to repay it. And that comes again into late payment fees. If you don't pay on time, that's often an issue and so there will be penalties for that. So I think repayment terms in general are also very important. Less relevant to the student loan debate, but very important in terms of financial arrangements, things like security. Are you giving anything as a security in case you can't pay the money back? So this is where a mortgage is the typical example. You will get a loan from the bank to buy a house. But if you can't pay that mortgage, then what will happen is the house will belong to the bank and sell it and get their money back. So you've always got to think about other security arrangements. What are you using to back up the fact that you say you're going to repay and if you don't, the lender needs to take something. So I think those are three very key aspects of a financing arrangement. Thank you. That's really useful vocabulary to have. And I think one of the things that often and surprises people certainly surprise me is that these loans don't function like a typical bank loan at all, in what ways do student loans differ from traditional forms of consumer borrowing? So I think having that income contingent element is very unusual in a commercial arrangement, it would be odd to say that you're only going to start repaying once the borrower makes certain amount of money. Sometimes business to business, there can be hurdles to reach, but having it be so linked to income is odd particularly with that kind of threshold elements as well. And the right-off feature I think is also extremely rare in commercial lending arrangements. I don't think it would be very easy to convince a big bank that after a certain amount of time the debt will just disappear. That is a very hard point to negotiate with a commercial lender. And particularly when it's such a long-term debt, I think that's also an uncommon to let it go on for so long. I mean, I suppose a mortgage sometimes is on similar, a similar length of term, but it would be again very unusual for the bank to say, oh, if you don't pay your mortgage off by this point, we'll just forget about it. So that's very unique to the student loan system. Great. Thank you. I think you've highlighted some crucial distinctions there. The fact that it doesn't affect your credit score in a traditional sense. And then there's no recovery and action in the way that there would be for a commercial loan as well does change the nature of the obligation entirely. It's more like a graduate tax in disguise, which is something I suspect will come back to. So now we understand the mechanics. And I think what strikes me is that on paper, a system where you can only repay what you can afford sounds quite progressive, yet student debt is one of the most politically charged topics in the UK right now. So, Marina, why does the student debt continue to feature so prominently in public debate and business news? I think you touched on it at the beginning, but it's an issue that sits at the intersection of so many other social and political issues. It's at the interaction of social policy, business, the labour market, having student debt then impacts graduates' financial choices. They'll have less money to afford houses, for example, which then has enough on effect to their ability to start families, which is also an issue that's I think kind of being talked about quite a lot at the moment. On the business side, the more graduates earn, the more they pay, as you mentioned, it's like a almost self-graduate tax. And that means that it's the people who are kind of at that middle level paying arguably the most, because the top high-end is to pay it all off and then the interest rates don't follow them around anymore. So it's catching some people at that level. So you almost are de- and disincentivised to make a bit more money if you think, well, that's just going to mean that I pay on student, my student loan is going to go up. So you can say there's almost like a a tax on achieving things, which has an impact on the economy more generally and is not what I think the government are trying to boost at the moment, which is the labour market and trying to get people to work hard in their perspective fields. So I think that's why there's a lot of discussion about it because it touches on so many other issues. I also think there's probably a timing element that particularly in that plan two band that I mentioned at the beginning, the people who are at university from 2012 to 2023 are now almost entirely all very entrenched in the labour market. And they're now realising that a lot of their money is going off to their student loan, but with the interest rates being extremely high, the amount they're eroing is not going down. So I think there's a discontent there and that you can work and work and work and pay it off and pay it off and yet it's still going up. So I think that's why it's kind of come to the forefront because the people who were essentially the first wave of students to really be penalised by this system are now becoming alive to the fact that it's really getting in the way of them saving. And similarly if that group in society have less money coming into their bank accounts just because they're paying off their student loan, they have less money to then spend on consumer goods. That has a direct impact on the economy as well because businesses need liquid cash to boost their businesses, but if everyone's either saving or it's going on the student loans, then they're not spending money on consumer goods. Great, thank you. I think that's a really interesting point about the psychological way to bit all because you're right that the nominal figure and the actual financial reality can be very different from one another. So really good foundation there so far. Let's start connecting this to the legal and commercial world. This is where it gets particularly relevant for anyone seriously considering a career in law. One of the skills that law firms test is the ability to look at a story and identify it not just what it is but who the players are and what the legal framework that governs it because that's how you identify who the clients are. So Marina, from a legal perspective, what framework governs student loans and who are the key actors involved? So the student loan system is actually genuinely governed by primary legislation and government regulations which set out the terms of repayments and eligibility and all of that kind of the key details of it. Essentially, it's not like a commercial arrangement where you have a contract that you can negotiate. This is what the terms are, you either accept it or you don't or you're eligible for it or you're not. So that's what kind of sits above everything and the system and that's what allows the government to change the roots because it sits with them and they have the power to update the legislation and the regulations as it suits them and their policy and their political goals. So that's the sort of overarching framework. In terms of the key actors, again, you've got the government. That's a very unusual player to have, particularly in a commercial context. Usually it's private business to private business and there's a lot more scope to negotiate whereas when you're an individual essentially up against the government, that's a very unbalanced sort of negotiating situation. So I think that's what makes it extremely distinct from commercial lending even when it's an individual against the bank. At least it's a bit more personal. Government versus graduates is a different situation. You've also got the student loans company. As I mentioned before, they're the ones who essentially administer the loans and collect them and if you log on to your student loan portal, your statement will be from the student loan company and then you have HMRC who also play a role in calculating your income and there's an interplay between all these different actors. But I think that it's crux is that it's government and individuals which makes it extremely unbalanced. That's a really important point about the contractual terms being set out by statute rather than being negotiated because then it means students enter and turn arrangement where the other side can effectively change the terms unilaterally. That's quite unusual for a contract law perspective and it's something that can be legally challenged or not. So Marina, my next question to you is does the student loan arrangement raise any distinctive legal issues compared to other financing models? So I think the main issue is the one that we've touched on is that they can change the terms to suit them and graduates have no real power to stop them and then you know, writing to their MP and trying to change the policy which is obviously quite difficult. A graduate couldn't just decide to stop repaying their student loan because they thought it was unfair. If they did, that could have serious implications, maybe even legal action. So there's that quite key risk for graduates is that they will just have to take whatever the terms are. There's no scope for negotiating. There's no scope for kind of withholding payment because they don't think it's fair. Whereas the government can quite happily change the terms if it suits them and it allows them to raise extra, extra government funds. And I think the the risk is one thing, but as I've mentioned, the power imbalance is also quite a key issue because that's something that is important to consider when you are a lawyer negotiating for your client. You've got to have an eye to what your client's negotiating power is and how to use that effectively whether you have all the power and therefore can dictate a lot of the terms like the government can essentially or if you have less power then you have to strategize and be much more considered about what point you really focus on versus what points you accept. I think again the student loan situation takes that concept to an extreme because there's not a situation where you as a graduate or a student can say to the government or the student loans company or whoever you're liaising with directly. Oh actually I don't think I'm happy with these terms. Can we can we amend them? I have some comments that's that's just not a practical reality. So I think it takes the concept of of negotiation power to its extreme. Brilliant I think that quasi-tax characterization is the one that I find really compelling and you mentioned the terms being changed in naturally that's actually been subject to judicial review hasn't it. So I think the subject speaks to a broad attention about whether this is a commercial arrangement or a public policy instrument and the law has struggled to give a clear answer on that. So we've talked about the legal framework and the key actors but I want to zoom out slightly because the higher education isn't just about social policy issue it's a major economic sector in its own right. So higher education is a major economic sector. How do student finance policies shape its growth stability and investment in the environment? I think the key point is that universities are businesses and they like I said they have cost they need to make some formal profit to be able to survive and obviously they're the beneficiaries of these tuition fees which are at the heart of the student loan system and they need to have enough money to deliver teaching to pay their staff to look after their infrastructure and to invest in research and development projects which is actually a really key facet of universities and what can make this country very innovative but because they are businesses and they need to have that sustainable level of income they also then have faced with the issue of actually where are my these fees coming from is an English again I'm focusing in on the English system but is an English student who's paying you know just over nine grand a term or is it a year I guess it's a long time going for me so I'm forgetting the nitty gritty but is it that or is it an international student who actually is paying much higher fees and is a better source of income for for a university so then they're then having to balance the fact that they need to have a proportionate number of international students versus local students and anything at that wrong there's backlash but if they try and you know convince the government to raise student tuition fees that's going to have backlash so it's a really difficult situation and a difficult ecosystem to make everybody happy in by thinking a similar vein the downsides of student loans is it actually and the system in general is if it is unfairly punitive to graduates is that going to put graduates off or potential graduates or potential students off going to university altogether I think we've seen a rise in apprenticeships and and non higher education groups into work and they've that's really growing in popularity because the system is not necessarily that beneficial to students and it makes going to university not necessarily that attractive but then again universities and businesses if people start going down apprenticeship routes is that going to mean fewer students this is obviously looking quite kind of broadly and I'm sure that's not actually happening yet but it's a balance it's this is important to universities because if people start being put off going to university they're losing a key revenue stream and so it's it's a difficult balance to strike and I think you I don't know anyone who works at a university in this capacity but I'm sure it's it's one that they discuss a lot about how they get that right and how they make sure that their their courses are attractive enough to convince people that that is what they should do as the next step in their lives after leaving school rather than going and doing something more practical or like an apprenticeship. Thank you that really highlights how funding design drives institutional behaviour and this isn't just about the universities themselves there's a much wider report effect why my investors or local economies care about these trends. Universities often sit in towns and cities and they bring in a lot of business and revenue when there is a stream of students coming and going particularly in smaller cities all up towns regions so university towns is a is a concept because students come and they spend money and they need places to live they need places to you know socialise they need activities to do so I think local economies do care because as I said if for some reason or if down the line the student loans issue means that fewer people decide to go to university will small businesses in typically university driven towns suffer as a result again if the proportion of international students goes up their needs and wants might have a slightly different profile than local students that will cause changes and and dictate how businesses I'd thrive or don't in in these towns so I think that's important in terms of the investment side I mean I know that student accommodation is a huge industry because like I said students very often need places to live because they've come from either sides of the country otherwise of the world again if numbers start to decline or your student profile changes investors will be alive to that and they'll they'll need to think about that and and if you're a company that develops student accommodation you need to make sure that you're pitching that right and given that this issue is now at the forefront of kind of public discourse is that going to have an impact on whether people are willing to invest in say student accommodation because people are now maybe thinking oh being a student is not very attractive the numbers are going to start plummeting potentially or oh there'll be a bigger influx of international students typically international students are wealth yet because they're able to pay these astronomically high fees so we can do more luxury student accommodation that then boxes out other people so there's there's lots of different elements and angles to to come at it but I think as we said at the beginning this issue does touch on so many other areas and so things like who is investing in what in the university sector will be a will be a big part of that. Brilliant you've given us a lot of food for thought there so here's one that I find particularly compelling from a commercial awareness perspective because it is about the secondary effects as well their debt itself is one thing but what does it actually do to graduate behaviour and why should businesses care so Marina how could rising graduate debt influence to graduate behaviour in ways that matter to businesses. So again I think I touched on this earlier but there's a psychological element that we've talked about that if you feel like you've got this kind of burden of debt that's following you around you're probably going to be more likely to try and save you're going to be more kind of fiscally responsible in general obviously this does not apply as everyone including myself at times but you aren't going to be kind of splurging on more frivolous things so I think that is a big part if the if you think about consumer spending how much of it is kind of necessary versus unnecessary I think if you're in more of the the luxury space and you've got a group of society you're trying to kind of tighten their belts and look after you know their finances is that going to have an impact on your business and I think there's also the housing element if graduates are burdened by debt they're less likely to have enough money to buy a house that then has impact on the rental market which is also then a nightmare so it does just kind of all fit in together I think you've highlighted very well that the salary over purpose dynamic is something employers are brackling with actively there's been a lot written about Gen Z Lee's relationship with work and the financial pressure from student debt is a structural driver that sometimes is overlooked in those conversations so if you're carrying more than £60,000 worth of debt you simply cannot afford to prioritise a mission over money in the same way and some of those behavioral changes have quite significant knock on effects so could this affect career choices mobility or entrepreneurship? I think this is a point that I find really interesting because I think one of the knock on effects will be that graduates will look for higher paying jobs, higher paying professions I think that has two negative spin-offs I think the first is the actually public sector work or typically low paid work but that is very socially important might get overlooked. There's no incentive to be a nurse or a teacher if you're going to end up at the same amount of debt as, you know, an investment banker, but not be able to pay it off in the same way. I think the other issue is that actually those high earning professions are going to have a lot of competition because their seal is the more likely, or the more intelligent route to go down because you're going to be able to pay off your student loan faster. That means more competition per position and then more people being disappointed and not getting a job and then actually scrambling around looking for a job in that sector that they then can't get because there's just too many people sniffing around the same position. So I think it's a real issue for kind of wider society in the wider job market because you're almost being disincentifized to earn less because you just want to get it off your plate. But then kind of circling back is that even the high paying professions are still probably only just paying off their interests that are only underlying loans. So it's a real catch 22 in that perspective. I also think that entrepreneurship, I think you mentioned, might really be impacted by it in the long term because I think income stability is going to be attractive when you've got this much debt sort of sitting behind you. Entrepreneurship is inherently more risky and volatile and actually will graduates on the whole just opt for a more stable, ideally high earning career rather than following their passion, following their innovation and their ideas. So I think that is a concern because then the economy will lose its innovative streak and everyone will just want to be a kind of cognitive machine because they can get through their student loan payments. Yes, I think you've highlighted the differences in those traditional industries very well compared to how it works in innovation. So that entrepreneurship point is really underappreciated one commercially because the startups and scaleups rely heavily on graduates who are willing to risk on early stage businesses and if that population is financially constrained and risk of us, that could have a meaningful effect on the innovation ecosystem over time. So now into the territory that really distinguishes strong candidates from in applications and interviews strategic long term thinking, this is where we're not just analysing what's happening but anticipating what comes next and thinking about how to add real valuable clients. So any meaningful reform to the student finance would require balancing some genuinely competing interests and the ability to identify those tensions and navigate them is exactly what clients pay law firms to help with. So Marina, if policymakers were seriously considering a major reform to the student loan system, what competing stakeholder interests would need to be balanced? So I think the key ones are obviously students, they're not only in the fairness debate but also in the access. I think we mentioned that at the beginning, you want educated people in your workforce going to university is it should be open to everybody actually the more educated people you have in your society arguably the better. But you've also got taxpayers, if people, if students don't pay their student loans, it falls on the taxpayer to further bail. That's a key stakeholder group that you've got to think about and I obviously it's quite a wide one and it covers a variety of people and types of people but I think you've got to think about the taxpayer intergenerational because also young people are also taxpayers, some of them didn't go to uni, they don't aren't battling the debt. So you've got to think about the people who are footing the bill as well if it's not the students. I think also in terms of businesses as employers they need to think about this as well and they'll be a stakeholder because they want educated people but they don't want this kind of a generation of workers who as you say are only working to pay off their debts rather than because they're passionate about what they're doing or the flip side is that you've just got no one who's following their passion because it's too expensive and then what happens to art and culture so it does just touch on so many totally different things but also if you think about universities they're a key stakeholder. As we said their businesses they need income streams coming in. How does that fit into all of this? If you suddenly said we're going to wipe student loans entirely, universities would crumble a lot of them are already struggling financially so you have to think about how it all fits together and I think that's why this is an interesting question because there's no easy fix because someone is always going to be suffering as a result of any changes you make. Thank you that's a really useful map of the stakeholder landscape and what strikes me is that almost every one of those groups has a politically legitimate claim. There isn't an obvious wrong answer here but it's precisely what makes a reform so difficult and why it keeps getting deferred and this is where the concept of fairness gets genuinely complicated because it means something different depending on where you sit. Marina looking ahead could alternative funding models meaningfully change the fairness to be around higher education? I think yes I think that alternative models would change where the risk lies and who benefits slightly and I suppose thinking about the graduate tax. If it reframes the loan into a tax and yes your payments are tied to your earnings but the way that they're calculated are it is different or there's more transparency and if it kind of shifts the risk away from taxpayers but in a way that as a graduate you just kind of can plan it a bit better and you know what's kind of what the junctures are I think that would help. I suppose if you look at kind of the complete opposite end of the spectrum if you think free tuition is completely tax funded the risk then is with the taxpayers not the graduates and it removes the student debt issue altogether but the immediate tax burden is increased and actually then if you are a graduate who then pays you know income tax national insurance is that just going to go go up in in reaction almost but long term is that more affordable for people or is that kind of the way you can mix the two and have grants but also to targeted subsidies but all the loan to kind of more modest and the the risk is spread I don't know the answer and I'm I'm glad I'm not a policymaker to actually try and figure this one out but there's definitely reforms that can we can be made I think even at its most basic is that a bit more transparency and I think for me who are doing my research into into this issue before the podcast is that actually I realize it's so difficult to understand how it works let alone what the reforms should be so I think transparency is the crux of what I think is the next step in all of this is to explain why students are being made to pay so much in the way that they are and why is it going up rather than down if you're paying quite significant sums each month so I don't know the answer in terms of what the reforms should be I just know that it needs to be a clear assistant that is easier for students and graduates to understand yeah and I think you quite clearly highlighted that the legal architecture underneath these different models is quite different isn't it with no real consequences for who bears the risk and who doesn't so how might these alternative models redistribute financial or legal risk and who wins and who loses so I think in terms of redistributed the financial risk I think if you went for sort of free tuition model they graduate from the students themselves it's it's completely off them they get to go to university for free doesn't matter what the outcome is fine but then the government are paying a lot of student loans or are paying a lot of tuition because they'd have to subsidise the universities in this situation and that is going to take a real hit to the public purse and as a consequence of that you know public spending might take a hit as well so the risk would be transferred on to essentially the tax payer because are they just going to end up having, you know, resources and public infrastructure that's crumbling because actually it's just not enough money to go around. I suppose the way the system works, the moment is that the risk is on largely graduates but not entirely because if they don't pay, the part goes back to the public person, to the government. So there's definitely an element at the moment where it's mixed. But I think thinking about the legal risk in the current situation is that this is a risk for graduates that if they don't pay, there could be serious consequences. But if the government don't get that money, they will have factored that in because that gets written off at some point anyway. So that's a calculation that they have to make. But I think it is difficult to balance where that risk lies and I think there should be an element where it sits with both stakeholders and then because you're bringing the universities, the risk for them, financial risk is that they don't have enough money to operate and they close down. And then the whole system collapses because there's no universities to even go to the university in the first place. So yeah, I think as we've said a number of times throughout this podcast, there are so many different priorities to balance and risk needs to be balanced as well. Yes. So if an algorithm is predicting your earning potential and deciding whether to fund your degree on that basis, you're potentially encoding existing inequalities into the system in a way that's quite difficult to challenge legally as well. So we've covered a lot of ground today from the mechanics of how student loans actually work through to the legal and fundamental frameworks and commercial implications all the way into strategic thinking about how reform and alternative models work. So let's land the plane here a little bit. Marina, after all the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels we've gone through today, are the student loans inherently unfair or does fairness ultimately depend on the system of the design? So I'm going to give the typical lawyer answer and say I think it depends, but I think it depends on who you're asking. I think as someone who went to university between 2012 and 2023, I do think there is some serious unfairness going on in this system and that kind of group of graduates and beyond I think all recent graduates as well, if anything, it wouldn't worse. Other ones who've been hit the hardest by this policy and are facing kind of the never ending uphill battle of paying off these loans and like we've said, is it even fair to call it a loan? It is more like a tax at this stage. I think the interest rate is too high to allow graduates to make meaningful repayments and I think that has knock on effects in terms of their ability to save to them, make big purchases like houses, that then impacts the ability to start families if that's what they want to do. And I think the unfairness then not only lies in it just being almost seemingly impossible to pay them off, but kind of compared to previous generations who either got it for free or for a significantly lower rate does feel unfair. But then I think there's that flip side of is that unfairness, a reasonable price to pay for increased access. Again, I think it probably could be a lot better and still have access as good as it is. But then I think you've also got to look at it from the perspective of if graduates aren't paying for tuition, who is? If the burden falls on taxpayers, including those who never went to university, is that fair? Should taxpayers who never want to university pay for particularly some kind of quite wealthy students to go to university for free? I'd argue maybe no. And if we didn't have any kind of student loan system, as I mentioned, would that just mean we revert to a situation where only those who are sort of middle and upper class or wealthy that can afford to go to university, that's not fair as well. So I think as with everything the answer requires quite a sort of nuanced response, there are undoubtedly serious issues with the current structure of the system. And I do think reform is required. As I said, I don't have a direct answer for what those reforms should be, but eliminating the idea sort of completely only shifts the unfairness onto someone else. So I think it's not a black and white answer. But what happens as the snowball of public discourse begins to grow, I think will be interesting to see. Brilliant. Thank you. I know you said that you'd start off in typical lawyer fashion, but I think that is a really honest conclusion. And it's one that captures the complexity really well that the system has genuinely progressive features, but then the design flaws are real. So they do fall disproportionately on certain groups. So thank you, Marina. That was a genuinely an interesting conversation. And exactly the kind of discussion that I think our audience needs, you've taken something that can feel very personal and emotionally charged and shown us how to think about it structurally, legally and commercially, and that's a real skill. So for everyone watching, whatever level you feel you've joined us at today, I hope you're leaving with a clear sense of how to think about it in more commercial way, not just what to think. Ask yourselves the question that Marina has been modelling throughout. So who are the parties? What framework governs this? And who bears the risks? What advice would a lawyer then give? That mindset is what law firms are looking for. So student debt is something that affects almost everyone in this audience, but now you can discuss it. Not just as someone who has lived it, but also someone who understands it commercially and legally. And that's a really meaningful difference when you're sitting in the interview room. Thank you for joining this week's commercial awareness conference, Marina. And the audience, if you found today's session valuable, do share it with someone else in their legal journey. And until next time, prepare without the panic. Thank you.