{"id":137466,"date":"2022-03-10T14:34:27","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T13:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=137466"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:10","slug":"everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-student-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/03\/10\/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-student-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything you ever wanted to know about student debt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJosephine Hartmann<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

\u2018Student debt? I have more than enough stress as it is!\u2019<\/h2>
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The other day, she saw someone on television win \u20ac10,000 in a lottery, says 24-year-old Ylke van der Zwet. \u201cAnd I thought: wow, that\u2019s a lot of money! But if I were to win that amount of money, I would still have tens of thousands of euros in student debt. That\u2019s when it really hit me how high my debt is. I think many students don\u2019t realise it yet, but it really does become a mental burden later on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van der Zwet is still studying. She already has almost \u20ac40,000 in student debt and expects to end up with around \u20ac60,000 in total. She started a bachelor\u2019s degree in astronomy in Leiden in 2016 and is now following a two-year master\u2019s in Communication Design for Innovation<\/em>. But she has been struggling with a burnout for a year and a half and is seriously behind in her studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt the pressure to constantly achieve high results and do other things besides my studies.\u201d She is a member of the PvdA youth movement and was an \u2018ambassador\u2019 for her course of study. \u201cI hardly had any time to relax. The only thing I did was play a bit of korfball, and then corona came along and that stopped too\u2026 I wore myself out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then got back on her feet, but a month ago things went pear-shaped again because she had once more joined a small board for eight hours a week. \u201cAs that wasn\u2019t on my CV yet.\u201d She is now functioning at about 20 per cent, she estimates.<\/p>\n

And what about her financial situation? Actually, it is not all that bad. Her parents pay her tuition fees and she lived at home for the first few years. She also borrows \u20ac750 per month, out of which she pays \u20ac430 in rent (\u201cI live very cheaply\u201d). The rest is for shopping, clothes, personal care, fun things and \u2018saving a bit so I have a buffer\u2019. She rarely goes out for a drink in a bar. She has an annual museum pass for exhibitions and a Cineville pass that lets her go to the movies as much as she likes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m worried that a basic student grant will soon be introduced and I will not be entitled to it because I have been studying too long.\u201d She hopes there will be good compensation for missing out on the basic grant. \u201c\u20ac10,000 would make a huge difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u20ac10,000, that is as much as the winner of the lottery is getting. It is also roughly what she has missed out on in basic student grants, she has worked out. Meanwhile, she is looking to the future with some apprehension. With the debt she has at the moment, she suspects it will not be easy to buy a house.<\/p>\n

\u2018100,000 euros in debt!\u2019<\/h2>
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The highest amount of student debt is \u20ac199,410.17. This is evident from a file that the HOP requested from DUO, the student finance agency. However, such an excessive debt is an exception.<\/p>\n

DUO has provided us with a \u2018picture\u2019 of student debts in March 2022. These are the student debts of everyone who has to repay them. Some have been repaying them for years; others may have only just started. This includes not only higher vocational (HBOers) and university students, but also intermediate vocational students (MBOers).<\/p>\n

There are 1,560,289 borrowers in total, which is 220,000 more than in 2016. Almost half are less than \u20ac10,000 in the red at DUO. These can be relatively small amounts: four percent have less than \u20ac500 outstanding.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, one in five of those who are repaying their debts (316,000 people) has a debt of more than \u20ac30,000, and the spread among this group of people with high debts is enormous. More than 100,000 people owe at least \u20ac50,000 to DUO and 1,000 of these even owe more than a \u20ac100,000.<\/p>\n