With the amount of debt that dental students accrue on the rise, Neel Kothari considers whether young people are being deterred from entering the dental profession by finance.
As I return from my 20-year dental school reunion in the wonderful city of Bristol, it strikes me that much has changed over the past two decades and the challenges faced by our newer members are almost unrecognisable from my own experiences.
Perhaps the most staggering is the amount of debt new graduates are facing, where student loans of around £100k are now commonplace amongst those who have had to self-fund their studies. The compound interest on this debt starts from year one, which means that students on courses of a longer duration like dentistry and medicine are disproportionately affected.
Several new graduates have reported to me that, despite paying back their loans for the past few years, the current interest rates (linked to inflation) mean that their loans just keep growing.
‘A graduate tax of 9% on top of income tax we all pay is a hefty burden and certainly not inconsequential’
One could argue that a loan linked with inflation means that it doesn’t actually grow, however student loans aren’t your typical loan where repayments are made based on what you owe, but rather a percentage of what you earn above a threshold amount (currently £25k). For this reason, money saving expert Martin Lewis suggests one should consider student loans more like a graduate tax, stating: ‘In practice what…
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