Hunt is on for ‘missing’ students who owe £2bn

MORE than £2billion in student debt is owed by graduates who have disappeared, leaving officials facing a worldwide search in a bid to claw back the cash.

Official figures reveal thousands of graduates are vanishing abroad, leaving millions of pounds in unpaid loans behind them.

The majority are from the UK, but thousands are from other European countries who took advantage of the loan system to fund their education here.

The Student Loans Company is trying to trace 103,000 former students with unpaid balances totalling £2.346billion.

Christopher Mcgovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “This is a massive scandal and an outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money. Some graduates seem to be escaping their decision to sign up for worthless Mickey Mouse degrees. It is time for the number of university courses to be halved. The money saved should fund a restoration of means-tested grants in place of this unsustainable system.”

The Student Loans Company has 67,000 “vanished” UK students on its books who did a degree then went abroad and lost contact with the authorities. They owe £1.7billion – an average of £25,000 each.

The company is also trying to track down 36,000 “missing” EU students who owe £646million. Bosses insist many are between jobs or in the process of making contact.

Of these “unverified customers” more than 11,000 are believed to have moved to Australia, 6,000 to the USA and almost 5,000 each in Spain and Ireland.

Under loans agreements, going abroad would not be a way of avoiding paying off student debts. But figures show the number of unpaid loans, where the debtor has gone missing and is believed to be abroad, is rising at an alarming rate. Last year outstanding debt rose at £10million a week. The balance rose £500million in the past 12 months.

The Student Loans Company said: “These figures provide only a snapshot in time as customers’ verification statuses change with circumstances.

“The majority of borrowers overseas are verified and compliant with repayments.”