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my experience is all anecdotal but I work with a lot of people without degrees that discourage their children from going to Uni because its not worth having the debt 'hanging over your head' because 'you'll never pay it off and be able to save for a house' - this is all bollocks, and the idea that its designed so that you may never it pay off, you just pay what is affordable, and it doesn't affect credit ratings etc is just not known by a lot of people.
There was some research on fullfacts (not a bad site, though always read more than one source) that lower income students were not put off by the loans.
Perhaps counterintuitive, I would be, but there you go :)