Americans owe $1.3 trillion in student loans. More than seven million borrowers are in default, and millions more are behind on their payments.

Borrowing for college is common across the globe. Even in Sweden, where tuition is free, most students borrow. What’s exceptional about the United States is that so many borrowers are behind on their loans.

So what do other countries do that makes their systems work better than ours?

Sweden is often put forth as a softer alternative to the United States. After all, tuition is precisely zero in this Scandinavian welfare state. But according to Christina Forsberg, director of Sweden’s student aid system, 70 percent of Swedish students borrow for college. In the United States, a comparable 70 percent of holders of bachelor’s degrees borrowed to fund their undergraduate studies. (Borrowing is lower among the half of American college students who do not earn a degree.)

And Swedish students borrow a lot. The typical student debt in Sweden is 172,000 kronor, or about $20,000. In the United States, undergraduate debt is less than $10,000 for those who don’t complete a B.A., and about $30,000 for those who do.