You only start paying them back once you are earning and you don't pay huge amounts of interest on the amount you have borrowed.
You will never be made broke by a student loan.
You do not need to start paying student loans back until you have left your course and are earning over £15,000 per year.
Even then the amount you pay back is based on how much you earn not how much you owe.
You will only pay back 9% per year of the salary you earn above £15000.
If you earn £18,000 per year (an average graduate starting salary) you will only repay £5.19 a week no matter how much money you owe
You would be paying back 9% per year of any extra money you earn over £15,000 (in this case 9% of £3000 per year)
You can take a repayment holiday of up to 5 years at a time that suits you.
If you have not managed to pay back the loan after 25 years of you leaving your course, the government will cancel out the amount you owe and your student loan debt will be written off.
This loan is not like a regular loan where you have to pay a lot of interest.
The only interest you pay is related to inflation which means the money you repay is the same in real terms as the money you borrowed.
It is likely to be the cheapest form of borrowing you will ever get!