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Dante Hicks · 12 Jul 2007, 03:31

Since the debt itself (or my bit of it was, anyway) was sold off years ago, I did wonder sometimes why the government administered it tbh. It's not like the private sector doesn't have experience with lending people money.

There are of course numerous private companies with outrageous approaches to debt collection, but then again government will put you in prison for not paying your TV licence and at least one local authority in my area proudly advertise (boast?) how many families they've evicted for rent arrears. Why they should be so proud of this evident failure on their part in preventing arrears is beyond me.

So yeah, the private secor are pretty shit, but so are the government. I used to be a strong believer in "this will make other, worse policies more easy" and in some cases that holds true. But what really holds shitty policies at bay is resistance (actual or anticipated) - through the courts, or the the street level bureaucracy, or the end users themselves. If a government at some point in the future wishes to **** the student loan holders the outcome will probably not be decided by whether it's a private or public agency administering the paperwork.

Of course, if there was to be a serious policy change - in that the government would not guarantee the loan, or that not everyone would be entitled to them, etc then of course this would mean quite a lot of changes. The government would need to abandon many of their further education targets for one.

12 Jul 2007, 03:31	#6
Dante Hicks Clerk Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 13,940	Re: Student Loans Since the debt itself (or my bit of it was, anyway) was sold off years ago, I did wonder sometimes why the government administered it tbh. It's not like the private sector doesn't have experience with lending people money. There are of course numerous private companies with outrageous approaches to debt collection, but then again government will put you in prison for not paying your TV licence and at least one local authority in my area proudly advertise (boast?) how many families they've evicted for rent arrears. Why they should be so proud of this evident failure on their part in preventing arrears is beyond me. So yeah, the private secor are pretty shit, but so are the government. I used to be a strong believer in "this will make other, worse policies more easy" and in some cases that holds true. But what really holds shitty policies at bay is resistance (actual or anticipated) - through the courts, or the the street level bureaucracy, or the end users themselves. If a government at some point in the future wishes to **** the student loan holders the outcome will probably not be decided by whether it's a private or public agency administering the paperwork. Of course, if there was to be a serious policy change - in that the government would not guarantee the loan, or that not everyone would be entitled to them, etc then of course this would mean quite a lot of changes. The government would need to abandon many of their further education targets for one.