I actually make less than the amounts you quoted and I still absolutely don't care. I'm actually living very comfortably on this salary. But then I'm in the north east, maybe in London you have to use food banks on 27k but over here you absolutely don't.
For example; a starter salary of £28k would be only £7k over the threshold and "only" result in repaying 9% of that, or £630 per year. But in Austerity Britain people on that kind of salary (e.g. nurses) are already starting to resort to using food banks.
Weigh up the alternatives, such as an apprenticeship or a job offer and university starts to lose ground to other options; but much more so for people with a lower socio-economic background. This is the problem.