Looking back, being a child from a poorer family under a Labour government in England wasn’t all that bad. We had the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which paid out £30 a week for college students who came from a family with a combined income of less than £20,817 a year. We also had low university tuition fees of about £3,000 a year, as well as substantial course grants, to make sure poorer students could pay their rent while studying.

But young people now are not nearly as lucky as that. Gone is the EMA that paid for books, sport, music or dance lessons (as well as cigarettes and Blue WKDs). University tuition has more than trebled, with many students now paying as much as £9,250 a year. And – as if all that wasn’t bad enough – the grants poorer kids received will now become loans that need to be paid back to the government. This means that a typical student from a family earning £25,000 or less will graduate with as much as £59,856 of student debt – not including potentially thousands of pounds of racked up overdrafts and other loans.

Maintenance grants – which former Chancellor George Osborne last year labelled “unfair” – currently cost the UK about £1.57bn a year. That might sound a lot, but when you hear that the government is considering dropping £5.7bn on doing up the Houses of Parliament, and losing £25bn annually from big business tax avoiders, it’s hardly anything. Yet the difference it’s going to make on students’ lives will be huge.

“If we really want the UK to become the meritocracy that many people think it already is, then we need to remove the stumbling blocks for children from low-income families, not increase them”

Students from low-income households are often already a step behind their wealthy counterparts when they start university. It’s an unfortunate fact that part of the reason a higher proportion of wealthy children get into elite universities is that they’re often much better equipped from their education and background than poorer students. There are endless reasons this could be the case, from tutoring and private education, to travelling and various summer school or work experience opportunities. It’s all about the environment they grow up in and the opportunities they have access to.

If we really want the UK to become the meritocracy that many people think it already is, then we need to remove the stumbling blocks for children from low-income families, not increase them. Unfortunately, many of those who are starting university now will never be able to shrug off their parents’ income (or lack thereof). Depending on how much they earn – and actually, evidence shows graduates don’t necessarily out-earn non-graduates these days – some students will be making up for their parents’ low incomes for the rest of their lives.

There is at least one benefit to the new loan system. Students will now have access to £8,200 a year (or £10,702 in London) to cover living expenses. While this is clearly still far below the poverty line, it’s an improvement on the maintenance grant, which was just over £6,000 a year and only just covered rent in the cheapest halls of residence, not including bills or food. Other than this, I doubt the loan will feel much different to students while they are actually studying. Those from low-income families like mine will still need to work part time to cover living expenses, spend their birthday money on the gas bill, buy their clothes in charity shops and avoid large but necessary expenses, like dental work. 

“(Cutting grants) basically punishes poorer students simply for being poor, so they have to take a bigger loan than those students from privileged backgrounds” – Sorana Vieru

It’s something the National Union of Students is also concerned about. In an interview with the BBC, Vice-president Sorana Vieru called the decision to cut the grants “disgraceful”. “(It) basically punishes poorer students simply for being poor, so they have to take a bigger loan than those students from privileged backgrounds,” she explained. “It could put off students from underprivileged backgrounds from applying, who might not understand how the loan system works, or are very debt-averse. We also know that mature students are way more debt-averse than younger students, and BME (black and minority ethnic) students perceive student debt on a par with commercial debt.”

Our generation is used to being labelled “entitled”, “irresponsible” and “lazy” by people who had access to free education, affordable housing and generous graduate wages. But it’s hard to shrug off the fear of permanent societal damage when those same under-informed people – who have absolutely no experience outside their own narrow social bubble – are the ones making the decisions. The deliberate drip of dwindling opportunities for those who desperately need them is all part of this government’s war on social mobility. It’s a completely transparent attempt at ensuring the top jobs continue to go to the wealthiest in society, something that’s already painfully evident when you look at the current make-up of the best paid and most powerful fields, like government, finance, media and law.

Each of these small but nasty tweaks to how student education is funded is another straw on the camel’s back – and unfortunately, by the time we know which one is the last, it will be too late for many smart and talented young people.