The graduate tax masquerading as student loans

Student loans have all the hallmarks of really being a graduate tax in disguise, says Merryn Somerset Webb. That's not a good thing.

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New graduates can look forward to a life of debt

My favourite story in the weekend press this week came from Rebecca Myers in The Sunday Times. She graduated last year from Warwick University with £25,262 in debt and has started to think about when she might be free of that debt. The answer, according to the online calculators she has looked at, is in 22 years (March 2038), at which point she is intending to hold a "debt-free party".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.