Graduate jobs vital to repay debt - graduate jobs

The latest figures on student loan repayments have highlighted the importance of starting a graduate job soon after leaving university.

According to the Student Loans Company (SLC), the UK's outstanding student debt is £1.52 billion, and the average graduate borrows between £3,500 and £4,500 a year.

Yet repaying the money has caused problems for some former students, with more than 400,000 accounts passed on to debt collection agencies in the past decade, the Daily Post reported. 

In Wales alone, there were 179,300 students with loans and 119,600 of them were liable for repayment at the end of the 2008/09 academic year, the SLC figures showed. Student loans hit their highest figure for a decade ahead of the 2009/10 semester, with 10,260 Welsh borrowers.

It is unclear whether the SLC figures include the 21,774 borrowers who still made monthly payments after repaying their full debt due to a mistake in 2007.

North Wales AM Eleanor Burnham said: "The fact remains too many students are leaving university with a huge debt. Graduates can find themselves excluded from both the job market and the housing market, and a reference to a debt collection agency will have yet another negative impact on their lives."

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