Paying off a student loan - an analysis of progress to full repayment from the integrated dataset

Summary

This report considers the experience of Student Loan Scheme borrowers in repaying their student loans.

It looks at cohorts of borrowers as they leave the tertiary sector and analyses their progress, year on year, towards achieving full loan repayment.

The analysis considers the progress of borrowers to full repayment by gender and by completion of qualification. Some findings are:

• Of the early cohorts of borrowers, the majority had repaid completely within seven years of leaving study.
• Later cohorts, who left study with higher debt levels, have made slower progress towards repayment.
• Little difference between men and women in progress to full repayment is evident in the data.
• The median repayment time for those who last studied in 1994 was 6.6 years for both men and women.
• A significant proportion of the 1992 cohort of borrowers - 25 percent - made no progress to repayment over ten years post-study.

In the earlier groups of borrowers, we are starting to see the cohort divide between those who can and have repaid, and those who have made no progress. From this standpoint there is some discussion on the number of borrowers who will never repay their loan.

This report complements another paper, Who doesn't pay back, that examines the characteristics of those who make no progress to repayment of their student loans.