£13,501 is the strangely precise sum representing the average amount of debt that this year's graduates in England and Wales will have on leaving university, according to Barclays in April 2005. The figure is 12% up on last year, but is still well below debt levels that are expected for students in a few years' time.

Today's graduates have faced annual tuition fees of a little over £1,000, whereas when top-up fees are introduced in autumn 2006, virtually all new students will be paying £3,000 a year.

The government originally set £3,000 as the upper limit for top-up fees, but a survey in the Guardian at the start of this year revealed only one college out of 85 that did not intend to charge the full £3,000.

That response is hardly surprising given the precarious state of many universities' finances, but it does mean that graduate debt will be much higher by 2009, when the first graduates emerge with their student loans boosted by three years of top-up fees. An average total debt figure of over £20,000 seems likely.

Debt is already a worry or at least a concern for nearly two in five graduates. The average £13,501 debt is just over two-thirds of the starting salary of the average graduate. Not all of the debt is from the Student Loan Company, whose loans are relatively cheap to service. Students tend to borrow from friends and family as well and the average debt here is close to £2,500, according to the Barclays survey.

If you do not want your children (or grandchildren) to start their working life weighed down by education debt, the answer is to undertake some financial planning. Just as school fees planning is best started early, so too is funding for higher education. And, as with school fee funding, you (and the potential student) will have to accept that it may not be possible to cover all of the cost in advance.

Fortunately, with higher education funding there is more scope to save tax, because your student son or daughter is unlikely to be paying much, if any, tax when they are at university. To take full advantage of this needs careful investment selection, so do speak to us before taking any action. Not all products and services are regulated by the FSA.