What Went Wrong with the U.K.'s Student Loans Company?

It's not a small number affected either: more than 88,000 students are without the funds from their student loans. Additionally, thousands have only received partial funding.

While no wrongdoing has been asserted as yet, students are bound to take umbrage when they hear the following: the SLC spent more than £1m last year on first-class rail travel, team-building events and consultants. Considering students can't get their funds, and it seems like some degree of confusion and slowness on the SLC's part is at fault, this will not go over well.

Deian Hopkin, the retired vice-chancellor of London South Bank University, and Bernadette Kenny, of Revenue & Customs, have been slotted to conduct the review by Lammy. Lammy promised a "frank assessment of what went wrong".

Students have been asked to repeatedly resubmit evidence and have found helplines crowded with busy signals for days. They've been told that documents have been lost.

Finally, things are so bad that the SLC had to give partial payments, as noted above, to some students so that they could have enough for rent money. The SLC blamed a rise in loan applications fueld by the global recession. Still, the SLC also had to admit that phone lines were understaffed. SLC Chief Executive Ralph Seymour-Jackson noted:

"We are very sorry for the genuine worry, confusion and distress this has caused students. I understand how much worry has been caused, particularly when students can't get through on the phone."