I guess for those people that, you know, have that shortfall and are a bit anxious about what it might take to bridge that gap, what are some of the options that they can consider to make sure that they've got enough for their essentials and potentially a bit extra during their university life?

Yes.

So I'd say the first most important thing that anyone can do is to, and if, you know, obviously not all students will have this kind of experience, but if you do live with your parents and your parents are able to make some kind of financial contribution to you, then have that conversation with them as early as possible.

If you don't get the maximum maintenance loan, it's because the government is expecting your parents, based on their household income, to make some kind of financial contribution to you to bridge that gap.

As I say, even if you do get the maximum amount, you're probably still not going to have enough to cover your living costs.

But that being said, have as open and as honest as a discussion with your parents as early as possible to basically lay out to them the fact that, look, I'm not going to get enough money from the government.

Even if I got the maximum amount, it wouldn't be enough.

What are the thoughts around thinking about credit or how it could possibly be used during this point in time?

What needs to be done? Because nobody seems to have come up with an alternative solution, apart from just saying, "Well, let's have a graduate tax." Now, in a sense, this is a graduate tax, but i-i-if you related it to just the, the sort of income tax system, surely that would be less bureaucratic and cheaper to run, and therefore, you wouldn't have to charge such extortionate interest rates.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I think, uh, a graduate tax has a lot of selling points to it, uh, not least the fact that it kind of gets rid of that confusion of the current system, where it's a bit of a mishmash between, um, a loan and a tax, because obviously, the very highest earners can pay it off in full quite early, and actually also, the people from the richest backgrounds never have to take out a loan in the first place.

So introducing a flat graduate tax across all people who have been to university would, in a lot of cases, probably reduce lifetime repayments, but also increase repayments for the very highest earners and those people who never took out a loan in the first place.

So it would, you know, in terms of social mobility, equal things out a little bit.

In kind of broader solutions to a student loan system, uh, number one, we would like the repayment threshold to increase annually in line with earnings.

This was promised by the government when the system was introduced.

And if they want to get those votes at the next election, surely they need to address this.