Student loans, like every debt, could be quite crippling. But students in the UK have it to thank for always being handy to bankroll their studies through graduate and postgraduate levels.

With debt becoming such a monster that everyone dreads in the country, it is not surprising that student loans are equally assuming that status, even though one would expect them to a lot more lenient.

Not very long ago, the Student Loans Company revealed that the debt owed by graduates in the past year had shot up by 32 per cent to £3.2 billion. This was coming at a time inflation was persistently rising and repayments rates were equally influenced by this trend.

Reports had said the government had switched its official inflation measure to the consumer prices index (CPI) five years ago. But it still added to students loans at the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate, which has increased at a much higher rate.

The figures, according to opposition politicians in the country, were suffering disproportionate financial pressure, especially in the public jobs like teaching.

The old RPI measure used in student loans has risen to 4.3 per cent, which is a full one per cent higher than the official rate which is used as an index for public sector pay.

And with Student Loans Company adjusting the figure it uses only once in a year, the amount owed by graduates that had benefitted from the loans scheme was bound to keep growing at a higher rate.

Even as experts and politicians argued it was unfair for people just coming through the university system to shoulder so much debt, which has even grown out of proportion before they started repaying, the government was eager to point at the gains of the policy.

Without doubt, hundreds of millions of British graduates have benefitted and many more will continue to. According to higher education minister, Bill Rammell, up to two-thirds of new students entering university this year would be eligible for at least a partial maintenance grant of up to £2,835 a year. This help will to a very large extent take the pressure off many poor students, who would ordinarily be unable to cope without it.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t make a complete sense for anyone to let any debt make them perpetually incapacitated, as they struggle to repay. Without being ungrateful to the Student Loans in any way, graduates could prioritise settlement of the loan vis-à-vis other debts they may shouldering, as suggested by an expert lately.

While student loans could afford to wait and even be lenient in its terms of repayment, debts owed on credit cards and other credit facilities may not be so indulgent.

 “Some people graduate with substantial student debt, but it is a fact of life unfortunately, whereas carrying big wads of debts on a high interest credit card isn’t,” said the chief executive of moneynet.co.uk, Richard Brown.

His position does not suggest that graduate should entirely refuse to repay their student loans, which is not possible anyway, but that they should see it as unlikely to put as much pressure on them as other loans from banks or credit cards debts would.

In a nutshell, people need to learn to put such needs in order of priority.