Congratulations! You’ve finished your exams. It’s time to think about paying off that debt. If you were lucky enough to start before 2012 you only owe just over £20,000. Sorry to anyone who started in 2012, next year we’ll write an updated list with all the yachts and cars you could have bought with your astronomical debt.
But with a Freedom of Information request from the BBC today revealing that 20,000 students have made a complaint to their university in the last year (a 10 per cent increase on the previous year), it might be time to reconsider that degree. Here's what this year's graduates could have bought with their student loans, had they decided not to spend it on learning...
1) 507 pairs of Topshop Baxter Jeans
They wear out so quickly this probably wouldn’t even have been enough to cover three years at university.
2) 13,528 Pret Choc bars
At 5,140,640 calories a lot of cardio would have been required to burn off this chocolately deliciousness.
3) 9020 Tall Flat Whites from Starbucks
If you bought one every day that’s almost enough money to cover 25 years worth of coffee. You probably consumed that much at university anyway…
4) A 22 week holiday to Centre Parcs
You could have rented a cabin in the woods by yourself for almost half a year. It might not have been as fun as fresher’s week, but think of all the time you could have spent on the lazy river!
5) A Zone 1 London Oyster Card for 16 years, 1 month, and 6 days
At £1256 a year by 2014 prices you could have travelled the tourist hotspots to your heart’s content
6) Ann Widdecombe as an after dinner speaker for a weekend
For £18,000 you could have hired Ann for three nights of after dinner speaking, leaving you enough money to buy enough booze that you could subsequently forget the whole experience. Alternately you could have used the change to hire one of those photobooth things people have at weddings to take loads of selfies with Ann.
7) 19 flights around the world
That’s how many round-the-world flights you could have got for your money. Hey there’s still time for this. Jon Hamm didn’t become and actor til he was 30. Take a gap year or three.
8) 20,292 trips on the Megabus
If you don’t like flying and were really savvy you could have got a lot of £1 Megabus trips for your money. Think of all the glamorous places you could have visited. Axminster! Hull! Worthing! A lifetime's worth of brutalist English bus stations to see.
9) 1269 litres of decent wine
The price of a decent bottle of wine is £12. This is how much to spend on a bottle to impress your boyfriend’s parents. All wine above that price basically tastes the same to a student raised on Echo Falls. Think about how much fancy wine you could have drunk with your loan.
10) 936,553 Custard Creams
At 65p for a pack of 30 from Tesco you could have bought 936,553 custard creams with your student loan. Although during finals it’s quite likely that you consumed this many anyway.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophie_gadd
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.