Student Loans Company (SLC) also identified suspicious applications involving fake documents and address duplication, along with franchised colleges enrolling students who can not speak adequate English, the paper said.
Phillipson said SLC had been working with law-enforcement agencies to investigate the prevalence of some Romanian students at certain colleges, but not enough was being done to stop wider abuse.
“But today’s revelations demand that we must go further and faster to protect the public purse.
“I will not tolerate a penny of taxpayers’ money being misused,” she wrote.
She added franchising in some universities had been “less about expanding access and more about meeting expanding overheads”, and the Office for Students (OfS) – the independent regulator of higher education in England – should have provided “guardrails” in this area.
Ms Phillipson said she plans to bring forward legislation to ensure the OfS has new powers to protect public money.
The UK’s student loan debt currently stands at £236.2bn.
Students, including overseas students with settled status, can take out government-subsidised loans to help towards their maintenance costs and to cover the cost of tuition fees.
The tuition fees are paid directly to a university or education provider, while the maintenance loan is paid directly to a student’s bank account in instalments.
Students need to repay their loan but not until they earn a certain amount after graduation – with the amounts currently ranging from £24,990 to £31,395 depending on which part of the UK they are based.
In England, the loans are eventually written off after 40 years.
The Public Sector Fraud Authority is part of the Cabinet Office and Treasury and works with the government and public bodies on reducing fraud.
