A fairer way to finance university students | Letters

Margaret Sharp says a 3% graduate tax paid by all graduates earning above threshold over a 30-year period would be fairer than the current loan system. Ian Noon says there are too many barriers to deaf students. Plus letters from David Reed and Peter Elmer

What Jo Johnson, the universities minister, forgets (Student finance system is fair and efficient, 14 August) is the distorting effect of the very unequal distribution of wealth in this country. Those whose parents or grandparents can afford to pay off their student debts on graduation are not burdened, as are the majority of graduates, with repayment over 30 years via the 9% premium on income tax. In other words, many graduates from well-to-do families escape having to pay this 9% addition to income tax, whereas those from less affluent backgrounds do not. Is this really a fair system?

Nor can a repayment system in which 75% of recipients do not pay off their debts over those 30 years be called efficient. What has driven the system, and indeed its extension to adult education and nursing, is the fact that the Student Loans Company's borrowing is, like the notorious public finance initiative, "off the books" and therefore does not register as government borrowing - until the debt is written off 30 years down the line when it comes back on to the books.

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