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First semester at the University of Cologne: “Massive debt trap for our skilled workers of tomorrow”
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO
Students who have taken out a student loan from the state-run KfW suffer greatly from the higher interest rates.
This is shown by an answer from the Federal Ministry of Education to a question from the Left.
The decile of students with the highest debt paid an average of 224.87 euros per loan in February.
In the same month last year it was 158.07 euros, which corresponds to an increase of 42 percent.
The average interest payments grew at a similar rate over the same period - from 60.70 to 85.74 euros per loan.
KfW loans are based on the Euribor reference interest rate and are adjusted twice a year.
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Their effective annual interest rate is currently 9.01 percent.
"It's simply unbelievable that some students pay almost as much interest on a KfW student loan as they do on rent," says Christian Görke from the Left Party group in the Bundestag.
He calls for interest rates to be suspended, as happened in the financial crisis and during the corona pandemic.
Otherwise there is a risk of “a massive debt trap for our skilled workers of tomorrow.”
The KfW emphasizes that it does not make any money with the loans and justifies the high interest rates, among other things, with increased default risks because the loans can be applied for regardless of income and assets.
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