WORKING-CLASS students, especially women, would be hardest hit by changes in the loan system that could result in them each repaying thousands of pounds more, according to research published by the Sutton Trust yesterday.

Chancellor George Osborne plans to freeze the £21,000 salary threshold above which graduates start repaying their loans for five years from next year, rather than pegging the threshold to inflation.

The overall average extra repayment for a man would be £2,300 over the course of 30 years, according to a new study published by the trust, which aims to address educational disadvantage.

But female graduates and those from poorer backgrounds could each expect to pay back an extra £3,300 over the same period because their lifetime earnings are typically lower.

The threshold freeze would affect those who took out loans within the last three years.

University College Union general secretary Sally Hunt said: “This report is a timely example of how the government’s reforms to university fees are going to hit the poorest the hardest.

“We need to be looking to find ways to encourage the brightest people into university, not putting up ever greater financial barriers.

“The time has come for a proper rethink of the whole system, otherwise we risk pricing brilliant students out of university and saddling talented graduates with life-changing levels of debt.”

Other proposed changes such as ditching maintenance grants — which do not have to be repaid — and replacing them with loans would make matters even worse for students from low-income households, according to the report’s author, higher education consultant John Thompson.

Those who would have been eligible for maintenance grants could see their average debt rise to more than £50,000, according to the report.

Low-earners and graduates from poorer backgrounds being penalised by shifts from grants to loans is a “serious cause for concern,” said Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl.

A spokesman from the government’s Business Department parped: “Our reforms to student finance will mean that students from low-income backgrounds receive a substantial increase in the cash-in-hand to help with living costs while at university.”