With the price of college tuition continuing to rise over the past decade, many students are graduating college with a large amount of debt.

According to the Huffington Post, more than 40 million Americans hold student debt. To put this in perspective, that’s roughly 11.4% of the American population and an amount greater than the entire population of Canada, Poland, North Korea, and more than 200 other countries.

Since the student debt plague is affecting so many Americans, some are looking at the federal government for answers. Some are asking for complete forgiveness of the total amount of debt owed, while others are just looking for partial relief from the deficit.

As if the debt wasn’t bad enough, student loan interest rates have doubled from 3.4% to 6.8% and are adding more debt to the terrible mountain of unpaid loans. Even if the government just cut the interest from the debt, many Americans suffering from debt would see sizable relief.

Another problem associated with student debt besides the obvious is that many employers run credit checks on candidates for employment, and many do not hire candidates with a high amount of student debt.

Even the lucky few who find a job out of college are seeing decreased wages, but a massive increase in the price of student loans. For this reason, young adults are putting off families, buying houses, and buying cars.

Even though students should keep this in perspective when applying to private universities and high-cost institutions, the school you get your degree from has more weight now than it used to.

The federal government, or even state government, sticks its nose into a lot of things for no reason, but this is a cry for help and it is their job to step up.