For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment. It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.” Dugmore’s story is far from unique. Last month, the Labour MP Nadia Whittome set out that even with a salary in the top 5% of earnings, six years after she left university, her £49,600 had reduced by precisely £1,000. Now, the political consensus has decreed: something must be done. Speaking to broadcasters on Sunday ahead of her schools white paper, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said she wanted to find “a fairer system”. Phillipson’s department is now in talks with the …