Sometime in 2008, I got a phone call informing me I had defaulted on my student loans. I had thought I was in a deferment period, but I had moved several times, and I wasn’t receiving the letters in the mail telling me my payments were past due. Seriously past due. As a consequence of the default, 19 percent was added to my principal. A debt that had once seemed merely enormous now appeared astronomical. I felt guilty: This was the punishment I deserved for having done wrong, for having failed to live up to my obligations.

Today, the average indebted new college graduate owes almost $35,000, compared to $23,000 back in 2008. They may be more indebted, but I hope they feel less isolated. After all, the upside of skyrocketing student debt is that Americans are finally admitting that this is a crisis—one that impacts millions.

President Obama acknowledged as much last night, during his final State of the Union address. “We have to make college affordable for every American,” he said. “No hardworking student should be stuck in the red.” He said that his administration had reduced student loan payments through income-based repayment programs, but also that the cost of college simply needs to be cut. He reiterated his commitment to making two years of community college free. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Back when I defaulted, these weren’t issues commonly addressed by politicians or discussed in the news. As a result, I had no idea just how badly the decks are stacked against student debtors. I didn’t know, for example, that the 19 percent added to my balance reflected so-called “collection costs and fees” arbitrarily determined by the lender. I had no clue that, in some states, defaulters can lose their professional certifications and driver’s licenses—professional certifications they probably went into debt to get, and driver’s licenses they need to get to work so they can pay back their loans. Nor did I know that, unlike most other kinds of debt, student loans were not dischargeable in bankruptcy; you can get out from under your credit card bills, but student loans will follow you to the grave. More fundamentally, I didn’t know anything about the way higher education is financed in this country, that tuition has come to replace state subsidies, and that the price of a year of college has increased by more than 1,200 percent over the past three decades.