Sir, – A loan scheme would place an enormous financial burden on newly qualified graduates ("Graduates would pay €25 a week in 15-year loan scheme", Front Page, December 14th). Starting out your working life with loans that could easily be in excess of €40,000 is cruel and anti-educational.
But there is an even darker side to this bad idea. Newly qualified debt-burdened students will be less inclined to start businesses, they will stop taking risks and certainly will think twice about doing postgraduate degrees, and they can forget about buying a house and getting married, as they simply won’t be able to afford it.
All this will be bad news for economic growth, and the educational level of our children will fall. In addition, collecting loan repayments is going to be a big problem, particularly if graduates move overseas (as other countries have found) and this will encourage even more emigration than we have at present. Such a loan scheme favours the rich as they will not have to take out such loans for their children, who, when they graduate will not be shackled with a lifetime of loan repayments. Those forced to take out loans will quite possibly still be paying them when their own children come to go to college. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS G COTTER, MRIA,
Professor of Biochemistry,
University College Cork.