Why are so many people trapped by student debt?

Find out more: listen to today's Daily Sensemaker on the Observer website or wherever you get your podcasts

In 2012, the coalition government changed the student loans system to try and shift the cost of higher education from taxpayers to graduates.

Higher earners were expected to repay more, with any remaining debt written off 30 years after the first repayment.

At a time when tuition fees were £9,000/year or more, paying fees upfront wasn’t feasible for most students. Taking out a big loan was the only option.

Enter the Plan 2 loan system: the only government loan available to the nearly six million students in England and Wales who started university between 2012 and 2023.

Plan 2 graduates have to repay 9% of everything they earn above a certain salary threshold while the interest rate is set at around 3% above inflation.

In the last financial year, graduates were charged £15.2bn in interest, while repayments totalled just £5bn.

More than 2.6 million people in the UK have student loan debts of £50 000 or more and the chances of many of them repaying this debt were made harder after last year’s budget.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced she was freezing the Plan 2 repayment threshold until 2030. That means that in April it will sit at just above £29,000.

Normally, that threshold rises with inflation. But freezing it while wages and living costs increase means more graduates will be pushed over the line and have to start repaying their loans earlier.

Many say the government need to have a rethink.

Photograph by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images Images