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I am all too aware...

During university, I found myself in financial hardships despite the loan system. Part of that was because of a determined effort to keep my loans as low as possible, part of that was because of occasional processing errors - during one Autumn term I found my student loan hadn't gone through (along with the rest of my county) and I had to scramble together enough to survive.

Once I graduated, I found that, rather than my loan going down, the high interest rates and low initial earnings meant my loan actually went up. It took five or so years just to get my loan back to where I'd started, and that was eating up a significant portion of my salary. While it may seem trivial, when you're living somewhere like London, the 'small' repayment amounts look like a mountain.