5) Save more, repay quicker One of the more significant findings showed how parents anticipate money they borrow to fund their child's university costs will take an average of 8.3 years to repay.
"And that's raised the cost to banks of obtaining funding and hence the cost of borrowing to companies and households.
As a report by the British North-American Committee (BNAC), a group of businessmen, academics and parliamentarians, points out, when a scheme is unfunded, the employer is, in effect, avoiding the cost of borrowing the money to fund the plan.
With interest rates still close to zero, the cost of borrowing the money needed to fund such spending would be negligible.
If the interest rate were higher, investment would be unprofitable because the cost of borrowing the necessary funds would exceed the returns on the investment.
Ray Boulger of mortgage broker John Charcol said: "I suspect it has been withdrawn because the cost of borrowing funds in the wholesale markets has gone up a bit in the past week or so".
Poor countries are fighting a proposal by the leading industrial nations to increase the cost of borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, dealing a blow to a campaign by Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers to change the lending agencies.
Additionally, these entities tend not to be as "blue chip" as traditional banks, and lower credit ratings translate to higher overall costs of borrowing if funds are sourced from capital markets.
"Widespread lack of confidence in the capital market has spilled over into other asset classes, driving up our cost of borrowing and denying us the capital needed to fund new student loans," said James Preston, the interim chief executive of the Pennsylvania lender, a state-owned company that both makes and guarantees loans.
