The time is approaching when Vietnamese higher education students will be required to contribute more to the direct costs of the process. As well, continued expansion of the system will become increasingly difficult without the institution of an effective student loans policy designed to assist with both tuition and living costs. Of major policy interest in this future scenario, and the topic of this paper, are the potential financial difficulties that borrowers are likely to face with ‘repayment burdens’ (RB), the proportion of incomes needed to repay their loans. We show how significant this issue is likely to be by constructing a hypothetical student loans system and calculating RBs for male and female graduates residing in four different parts of Vietnam. We find that there are likely to be significant problems, potentially leading to high default rates, for many graduates if the financing of higher education expansion uses typical forms of student loans.