Graduates could find themselves still paying off their student loans in their sixties under reform plans to kick in next year.
Under current rules, students begin repaying their loans when they start earning £27,295.
This then lasts for 30 years, after which point it is written off. The most recent Department for Education figures show that means only 23% of students ever repay their loans off in full.
However, under new measures, students starting university courses in 2023/24 will have to begin paying back their loans once they are earning more than £25,000, the Government has announced.
The repayment period will then be extended to 40 years meaning a 21-year-old graduate could still be repaying their loan at 61 or later - a time when many are approaching retirement age.
The Government said this would mean that a graduate earning £28,000 would pay back £17 a month.
But, under the reforms, graduates will pay 81p of every pound back. Right now, you only pay 59p of every £1 you borrow.
The reforms would mean that more than half of students who take out a loan to start a full-time university course will repay their debt in full, the Government said.
Interest rates will also be cut for new students so their loan balance rises with the rate of inflation.
The long-awaited Government response to the Augar review into higher education funding also announced a "clampdown on poor-quality university courses that don't benefit graduates in the long-term".
And students who did not gain grade 4 GCSE passes in maths and English, or two E grades at A-level, would potentially be blocked from accessing loans.
A second consultation sets out plans for delivering a Lifelong Loan Entitlement for people to "retrain flexibly at any time in their lives", worth the equivalent of £37,000, or four years of post-18 education.
The Department for Education said the changes would "rebalance the burden of student loans more fairly between the student and the taxpayer and ensure that in future graduates don't pay back more than they borrowed in real terms".
Meanwhile, tuition fees will be capped at £9,250 for a further two years, while student loan interest rates will be set at no higher than the rate of inflation from 2023/24.
The Government said this meant that a student starting a three-year course in 2023/24 could see their debts reduced by up to £11,500 at the point where they had to start repaying the loan.
It comes just weeks after Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a freeze on the student loans threshold, meaning many graduates will pay tax on an extra £1,255 this year.
Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan said the consultation on minimum entry requirements for loans made it clear this was not a "definite" direction of travel.
"But it is something that I think it's right that we explore as an option. We used to have an entry requirement in this country of two Es," she said.
"We all know that there are young people that get three Es every year that feel compelled and pushed to go to university before they're ready, and I think that that is doing them a disservice," Ms Donelan added.
She said the requirements would have exemptions for mature students, and that pupils who did not pass English or maths GCSE but went on to get the equivalent of three Cs at A-level would also be exempt.
In 2021, 4,800 students entered higher education without passes in English and maths GCSE.
Ms Donelan said the changes were "absolutely not" about getting fewer people to go to university.
"This isn't about pushing people to or away from university - this is about having a system that's designed to be geared up to the individual," she said, adding that the "obsession" with targets or quotas for students needed to end.
"This is a Government that is committed to real social mobility, and real social mobility is not getting somebody to the front door, so it's not about getting a kid to university and then job done," she said.
"That's not job done if they then drop out after a year or they then complete that degree and it never leads them to a graduate job - that's not a quality education and it's not a quality outcome."
Ms Donelan said the £161billion debt on the student loan book as of April 2021 was a "sizeable sum" and that there needed to be "a fairness for the taxpayer as well as for the graduate".
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Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said: "Our country's world-leading universities and colleges are key to levelling up opportunity by opening up access to a range of life-long, flexible post-18 options to help people train, retrain and upskill.
"These changes will create a fairer system for both students and the taxpayer."
Ms Donelan said: "We are delivering a fairer system for students, graduates and taxpayers as well as future-proofing the student finance system.
"We are freezing tuition fees and slashing interest rates for new student loan borrowers, making sure that under these terms no-one will pay back more than they have borrowed in real terms."
Sir Philip Augar, chairman of the Augar review into higher education, said: "The Skills Bill already going through Parliament, the lifelong learning entitlement, the reforms to student finance and the refocusing of HE provide a framework that is fair, sustainable and has the potential to drive the whole economy forward."
