Hacker News Reader

Comment by bicubic | Hacker News Reader

In Australia I think we have a really good system, although politicians are trying to destroy it now.

You get an interest-free loan for your education, the only thing it accrues is inflation. The loan is repaid as a percentage of your taxable income if and only if that taxable income is greater than 54k or so. It means that you will potentially never be asked to repay your student loans if you never find professional work.

View on HN

54K seems like a really good deal (at least, an incentive for anyone to take on a university course). In the UK, the threshold is much, much lower: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

Probably speaking in australian dollars.

Which is still ~32k GBP, so almost double the UK threshold.

The UK threshold is still sensible. 9% for everything above £17k and forgiving all debt after 30 years means that paying back your debt won't significantly affect your lifestyle and that lower earners will never have to pay everything.

That seems pretty sensible to me. When the educational funding bubble pops in the U.S., I could imagine something like that taking it's place.

We have nearly the exact same system in the US.

Federal loans (90% of student loans) are paid directly by the government, and come with income based repayment plans capped at 10% of disposable income.

The debt is cancelled after 20 years, so if you don't find a decent job, you'll pay very little.

There is interest though.

Minor correction: there is no real interest on HECS debt but it is indexed by inflation every year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com