The income level at which Welsh graduates start repaying loans is to be frozen, the Welsh government has announced.

In a move which has already proved controversial in England, the threshold for Plan 2 loans will be frozen at £29,385 between 2027 and 2030, rather than rising with inflation.

It means graduates will start repaying their loans sooner than they would otherwise have done as they are likely to meet the salary threshold earlier.

NUS Cymru president Jennifer Taylor has criticised the move. “Let’s be clear, a bank could not get away with this,” she said.

But Cefin Campbell, deputy minister for skills and tertiary education, said the Welsh government had been left with “little choice”.

Campbell also said the government was “considering” raising the cap on university tuition fees, currently £9,790 a year, and an announcement would be made “in the next couple of weeks”.

The Welsh government is yet to confirm its approach after the UK government announced last year that fees in English universities would go up to a maximum of £10,050 from September 2027.

Earlier this year, the previous Welsh Labour government said it would not freeze the loan repayment threshold in Wales, after former Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the decision to do so for English Plan 2 borrowers in her November 2025 budget.

The UK government decision was heavily criticised by some MPs and financial expert Martin Lewis, who said it was unfair to change the terms of the loans once they had been taken out.

But, announcing the decision on Wednesday, Campbell said the system – which is administered by the Student Loans Company and HM Revenue and Customs through a shared UK-wide system – “cannot support different repayment thresholds for Welsh and English borrowers”.