More than one-quarter of student loan borrowers have debt, but nothing to show for it.

About 28% of Americans with student debt didn’t complete the educational program for which they took on the loans, according to the 2016 National Financial Capability Study published Tuesday by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The study adds to the growing body of evidence that the borrowers who struggle the most with student loan debt aren’t necessarily those with the largest balances. Instead, borrowers who don’t complete their degrees often find it challenging to repay their loans — even if they’re relatively small — likely because they didn’t earn the credential that would give them an earnings boost in the labor market (not everyone can be a college dropout superstar like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates).

More than half of the borrowers who didn’t finish their schooling said they were late at least once on a student loan payment, compared with 38% of borrowers who did finish their education, Finra found. Roughly two-thirds of borrowers who had that experience said they would change the way they approached borrowing if given the chance to do it again, compared with 54% of borrowers who finished school. Americans earning $25,000 or less were also more likely to report borrowing without completing than their wealthier counterparts.

“This is a huge issue,” said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, who studies higher education finance.

About one-quarter of borrowers with some college, a certificate or a technical degree are behind on their student loan payments, according to a Federal Reserve Board of Governors survey published earlier this year. That compares to 12% of those who have bachelor’s degrees and just 7% of those who completed graduate degrees.

The Fed survey also found that those with smaller amounts of debt struggle the most, which makes sense given that a low level of borrowing could signal that a student didn’t get very far in school. More than 20% of borrowers with $10,000 or less in debt are behind on their payments compared with 17% of those with $10,000 to $25,000 and 11% of those with $100,000 or more in loans, the Fed survey found.

“Too much of the conversation surrounds this image of the bachelor’s degree recipient working at Starbucks and having $80,000 in debt, that is a very uncommon circumstance,” Baum said. “But this problem of dropping out with $5,000 to $10,000 of debt and having nothing to show for it, that’s a very common problem.”

One explanation: The value of a college degree in the labor market has grown almost in tandem with the cost of college, said Mark Huelsman senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.

“It’s more important than ever to get some college experience and college degree,” he said. “As it’s become more important, we’ve also increased the risk of borrowing and dropping out.”

What’s more, these risks are higher for low-income students and communities of color. Black students are more likely to borrow when they attend college and when they do, they tend to borrow more. They’re also more likely to drop out.

“The system that we have in place risks calcifying inequality that we already see in the labor market or that we already see in the higher education space,” Huelsman said.

Increasing state investment in public colleges and universities could lower the risk of attending college for these communities and students more broadly, both by lower the cost and by making more funds available for colleges to provide services that could help students get through school, Huelsman said.

Making it more difficult for borrowers to use their federal financial aid on schools with a poor record of completion for students could also clamp down on the population of students who graduate with debt but no degree, Baum said. Evidence indicates that the growth in students borrowing to attend for-profit colleges is responsible for a substantial share of the increase in borrowers struggling to pay off their loans.

She also suggests automatically enrolling borrowers in programs that allow them to pay off their loans as a percentage of their income. That way borrowers with no degree who are struggling to pay off their loans because they can’t get a decent job could ensure their payments are manageable. (Australians repay their student loans in this way, though there is some question as to whether it could be implemented successfully in the U.S., which has a much larger higher education system).

Ultimately tackling this problem may require a shift in focus from policy makers and the media from students who have degrees and high levels of debt to students who borrow, but don’t get anything to show for it in exchange.

“There are too many students for whom that’s the case,” Baum said.