I Owe U

Student debt is on track to top $1 trillion this year. What happens when diplomas stop opening doors?

Brian Finke for TIME

Kohle Nixon, Ohio University '09, B.A., specialized studies. currently in $67,000 of school debt.

Like many of the protesters at Occupy Wall Street in New York City, Amanda Vodola is young, underemployed and loaded with student debt. She spends her days running around, helping organize the movement, and her evenings bussing tables at a dine-in movie theater in Brooklyn. Last spring, Vodola, 22, graduated from Fordham University with a degree in English. "I grew up with this narrative that to get a good job I need to go to school," she says. But the job she has "is not enough to pay the bills." And the bills she's dreading most are the ones tied to...

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