Young people’s faith in student finance has been badly shaken by findings from the Treasury Committee that official promotion of loans, likening repayments to a phone contract or cinema tickets, amounted to mis-selling. One student accommodation boss warns the damage runs far deeper than clumsy communication.

The committee’s report, published this week after an inquiry that drew more than 52,000 responses, concluded that the Department for Education and the Student Loans Company misled prospective students in three respects, including by failing to make clear that the government could rewrite loan terms retrospectively.

Around 5.8 million people took out Plan 2 loans between 2012 and 2023, and Business Matters has already reported that more than half of graduates say they would not take out a student loan again, with the average graduate now leaving university with roughly £53,000 of debt.

“The latest findings point to something bigger than poor communication around student loans,” says Owen Dixon, founder of Best Student Halls. “They suggest a serious trust gap between young people and the system they are being asked to buy into.

“For years, students were encouraged to see university debt as manageable, normal and something they did not need to worry about in the same way as commercial debt. But that message looks very different when graduates are facing repayment threshold freezes, high living costs and a much more uncertain financial landscape.”

Dixon reserves particular criticism for the comparisons at the heart of the mis-selling row. “A phone contract is a short-term consumer cost. A student loan can follow someone for decades. The two are not financially or emotionally comparable, particularly given that repayment terms can change and the overall cost of university has risen so sharply.”

The Plan 2 repayment threshold, confirmed at £29,385 from April 2026 and then frozen rather than rising with inflation, has sharpened the sense of grievance. The committee has urged ministers to reverse the freeze at the next Budget.

“The Plan 2 repayment threshold freeze adds to the sense that the goalposts have moved,” Dixon explains. “When students are told not to worry too much about the debt, but later see repayment terms change, it is not surprising that confidence starts to weaken.”

For employers, none of this is an abstract campus quarrel. Graduates diverting more of their pay into repayments have less to spend, save or risk on starting a business, and the pipeline of young talent is already under strain, with nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training and entry-level vacancies at a five-year low.

“For prospective students, the question is no longer just ‘Can I get into university?’ It is increasingly ‘Can I afford the whole experience, and will the return feel worth it?’” Dixon says. “That does not mean young people are rejecting higher education. Many still see university as an important route into opportunity, independence and long-term career progression. But they are becoming much more careful about the financial trade-offs.”

His prescription is transparency. “Young people need to understand not just the headline cost of tuition, but the full cost of studying and living as a student. They also need to feel that the system is being explained honestly, without comparisons that make a long-term financial commitment sound like everyday spending.

“If confidence in higher education is to be rebuilt, students need a clearer link between what they pay, what support they receive and what university can realistically help them achieve.”

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

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The Food and Drug Administration is moving forward with a regulatory overhaul to limit U.S. reliance on foreign drugs and cut red tape to allow American manufacturers to fill the space, FOX Business has learned.

The FDA is proposing a new rule Friday that aims to streamline processes for American drug manufacturers while toughening regulation for foreign ones.

The FDA is launching a new website to go along with the overhaul that details all the ways the agency can assist U.S. manufacturers. A major loophole the changes look to solve is foreign factories producing raw drug materials that stay completely invisible to the U.S. by routing the products through intermediate facilities overseas.

“The FDA is proposing changes to our establishment registration regulations that would reflect how distributed manufacturing actually works — as one single establishment,” Dr. Michael Davis, acting director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

“The proposed changes would make it easier for innovative manufacturers to operate efficiently, and give the FDA a clearer, more accurate picture of how and where drugs are being made,” he added.

THE OVERLOOKED REASON WHY NEW DRUGS TAKE SO LONG — AND THE $10 TRILLION FIX

The Food and Drug Administration is moving forward with a regulatory overhaul to limit U.S. reliance on drugs from foreign countries and cut red tape. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images / Getty Images)

“When an active ingredient in a medicine reaches an American patient, the FDA should be able to trace exactly where it came from,” said Davis. “Closing this registration gap for foreign establishments is a concrete step toward increasing the supply chain transparency that patients deserve.”

Officials say current regulations force American companies to register every single production unit as a completely separate factory. The new regulations will allow these to be streamlined into a single registration.

19 DRUG APPROVALS IN 2024 THAT HAD ‘BIG CLINICAL IMPACT,’ ACCORDING TO GOODRX

The website will also provide tracking on the progress of the FDA’s other anti-red tape programs, such as TrialBlazer, the PreCheck Pilot Program and others.

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TrialBlazer seeks to boost the development of new drugs in the U.S. by relying more on computation during the development and approval process as well as allowing more flexible rules for clinical trials.

The pilot program seeks to help U.S. companies build manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

One in five women in the UK steps back or drops out of her career after having children.

Zoe Duce, who spent a decade building a fast-paced career in media before becoming a mother, says the problem is not ambition. It is the near-total absence of systems, planning and process around one of the biggest transitions in a woman’s working life.

The scale of the problem should trouble any employer. More than a quarter (27 per cent) of mothers either don’t return to work after maternity leave or leave within a year of coming back, with most citing poor employer processes, a lack of flexibility and difficult reintegration. Previous research suggests the juggling act has driven a quarter of a million women out of their jobs altogether.

The financial toll is equally stark. ONS analysis shows mothers’ monthly earnings fall by an average of 42 per cent within five years of a first child, a motherhood penalty worth more than £65,000 per woman.

Duce planned her own return with enthusiasm, only to be blindsided.

“Maternity leave hit me harder than I expected mentally. I’d built my life around a fast-paced career in media for 10 years, and then overnight, it just stopped. It felt like going cold turkey; one minute I was surrounded by people and energy, the next it was quiet, isolating, and completely unfamiliar. I felt like I’d lost a huge part of who I was.”

What followed was a relentless cycle of collapsed childcare, sick days and shifting work schedules. “Every time I tried to rebuild my life, something would derail it. I felt like I was constantly on the back foot,” she says.

When she opened up to other mothers, the responses were bleakly uniform: “it’s just s**t for a few years” or “this is just how it is”. Duce refused to accept that losing yourself is simply part of the job description.

“For me, that’s the biggest misconception,” she says. “That women choose to step back because they want to. In reality, most are being forced into it because the system around them isn’t set up to make it work. We’re exhausted, overwhelmed and trying to make impossible situations work.”

Her answer was to treat the chaos like an operations problem. She built structured childcare contingencies, clear backup plans with her partner, weekly planning routines and non-negotiable time for work and wellbeing.

“The difference was immediate,” she says. “It wasn’t that the curveballs stopped, it’s that I finally had a way to handle them.”

That experience became MoveThru, a UK company helping professional mothers, and the organisations that employ them, navigate maternity leave and the return to work. With around 590,000 women going on maternity leave in the UK each year, Duce argues that “nobody is owning the process”, leaving mothers, managers and employers improvising through a transition that deserves the rigour of any other business-critical handover. It is a challenge that sits alongside growing pressure on employers to rethink workplace support for reproductive health more broadly.

“At the moment, mums, managers, and employers are all winging it,” Duce says. “But since having children is one of the biggest moments in a woman’s career, it deserves far more structure and attention than it’s currently being given. The solution is planning, not sacrifice.”

For SME owners, who rarely have an HR department to lean on, the message is pointed: retention is cheaper than replacement, and structure beats goodwill. To that end, Duce has created a free downloadable maternity leave and return plan giving women, managers and employers a clear framework, including what staff are entitled to during maternity leave.

“My goal is to remove the guesswork,” she explains. “When mothers and their employers understand what they’re entitled to and how to plan for what’s coming, everything changes.”

Her bigger message is simpler still. “I want women to know they aren’t failing,” she says. “I was told over and over again that this was just how motherhood is supposed to feel. But it doesn’t have to be.”

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

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New 100,000-seater home will be some 350 metres away from Old Trafford

Manchester United have confirmed the club’s new 100,000-seater stadium will be built on land recently purchased from Indurent, situated roughly 350 metres from Old Trafford.

United confirmed the location for the new stadium on Thursday in the Wharfside Strategic Masterplan and while the stadium won’t be built on land currently connected to Old Trafford, they insist it will honour the current ground’s history and traditions.

The new ground will be the centrepiece of a Stadium District, which will be purpose-built for sport, entertainment and year-round activity, with the new stadium serving as the flagship landmark of the wider Trafford Wharfside development.

The masterplan sets out a bold vision for Trafford Wharfside, including new and improved public transport links, enhanced rail connectivity, and extensive walking and cycling infrastructure. The vision is for a diverse neighbourhood creating 48,000 local jobs and 15,000 new homes, with the new stadium acting as the catalyst.

It is estimated it could offer a £7.3bn per year boost to the UK economy, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Collette Roche, CEO of the new stadium development, said: “The publication of the Wharfside Masterplan marks another significant milestone in our journey to create a new world-class home for Manchester United at the heart of a vibrant and transformational district for Trafford and Greater Manchester. Together with our partners, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver a destination that creates lasting benefits for supporters, local communities and the wider region for decades to come.

“The proposed stadium site is ideally located alongside Old Trafford, enabling us to preserve the heritage, traditions and matchday rituals that are so important to our supporters, while also providing the connectivity and infrastructure required to deliver a truly world-class fan experience.

“We are committed to building a world-class stadium with our supporters, not simply for them. Atmosphere, affordability and accessibility will remain at the heart of our plans, and we look forward to continuing our engagement with fans and other stakeholders as we move into the next phase of design and development.”

Coun Tom Ross, leader of Trafford council, added: “We are delighted to introduce the masterplan which starts a long journey to piece together what could happen where, to bring this world-class cultural and sporting destination to life.

“We want to create a great place to be, not just on matchdays but every day – and we’re looking for as many residents and businesses as possible to help us to shape this vision, through our forthcoming consultation process.

“Wharfside will become a network of attractive neighbourhoods in which to live, work, wander, explore, relax with family, enjoy nature and wildlife, meet friends, eat out, have a drink, shop and be entertained.

“It will have the best of parks and waterside spaces, housing including affordable options in vibrant and diverse localities, new health and educational facilities, joined up public transport and places to walk, cycle and be active.”