Thirty-seven million Americans today have student debt and for many of them, this debt negatively impacts their ability to purchase homes, cars or other consumer goods. And for a consumer-based economy like ours, that’s bad news.

It’s true that the national outstanding student debt is miniscule when compared to mortgage debt, so the chances of a student loan “bubble” crashing the economy, as the subprime mortgage crisis did, are slim. But student debt does take some of the heat out of our “consumer” economy by reducing student borrowers’ ability to carry other consumer debt. The impact of education debt on graduates’ Debt –to-Income Ratio, the standard measure of a consumer’s ability to carry debt, is approaching the danger zone. An analysis of the average federal student debt, as compared to the typical starting salary for a recent college graduate, shows that the standard monthly payment can consume nearly 20 percent of the student borrower’s income typically reserved for paying down debt. For example, a student who takes out $23,000 in federal subsidized Stafford loans, with a 3.4% interest rate and under the standard repayment term of 10 years, will have monthly payments of $226. If the student’s lucky enough to land a starting salary of $42, 569 (the median for a recent college graduate), he’ll make about $3,547 monthly. Of that amount, personal finance experts recommend that no more than 37%, or in this case $1,313, should be devoted to debt payments. That means that, not counting alternative education loans or credit card balances from college, the $226 student loan payment eats up about 17% of the income he can use to pay consumer debt, leaving just $1,086 for a mortgage, car, and credit card debt.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many Americans in their 20s and 30s are putting off buying their first home. In my home state of Massachusetts, a state with one of the higher college graduation rates, the Boston Globe just reported that the number of 25-to-34-year-olds owning homes plunged 20 percent between 2005 and 2010, according to the U.S. census. The rate of homeownership, which measures the percentage of housing units occupied by owners, fell more for 25-to-34-year-olds than any other age group, declining to 34 percent from 40 percent in 2005. Without first-time buyers spurring home sales and allowing existing owners to sell and buy new homes, the real estate market stalls – and recent history has taught us the extraordinary importance of the real estate market to the overall U.S. economy.

So what’s the solution? Unlike credit card debt or an unsustainable mortgage, loans which result in a college degree are supposed to be a steppingstone to a more financial secure future—but only if the loans are manageable. There are a plethora of programs in place to help student debtors lower monthly payments to a more manageable percentage of their income, but student borrowers need to be proactive and exercise their rights under the program before it is too late. President Obama just announced last week a new initiative to increase awareness about repayment options like income-based repayment (the best kept secret in the federal student loan program) through enhanced online and mobile information resources for borrowers, as well as improved exit counseling by the college as the borrower leaves school. More communication for communication’s sake, though, isn’t an adequate solution. The fundamental flaw in communications efforts like exit counseling isn’t the quality of information; it’s that the information is not personalized and is typically delivered months before repayment starts, often in an auditorium-sized setting or a rote, online process.

Research shows that in order to retain key financial concepts, students need the information to be timely, relevant to their own personal situation, and immediately actionable. Engagement is the key to timely, relevant, and actionable communication. Similarly, building top-notch online and mobile resources for student borrowers will be effective only when we figure out how to get students and alumni to regularly interact with these types of online tools. These sites need to be more than an encyclopedia of program rules and regulations. To engage, the sites need to be engaging – fun, even. Lastly, borrowers need a live resource they can turn to for advice and counsel when they need it.

If either presidential candidate wants to get serious about turning student debtors into healthy consumers, they’ll need to instruct their administrations to get more creative in their engagement techniques. We need to invite the borrowers to the water to drink – and then get them to come back the next day for more.

You write: "A college degree all but ensures stable employment." This is not true for recession-era graduates. Whether graduates can pay off student loans without pain -- or seeking a special deal from the government -- depends on the degree (accounting or Me Studies?) and the college's reputation.

For years, students were told that college would pay off, whether they were going to a high-priced, third-tier private college for six years of beer and pizza or earning an associate degree in radiologic technology at a low-cost community college. It's not so. Some college debt is bad debt.

Students need to be aware of their odds of completing a degree -- how many C students earn a bachelor's? -- the starting pay in their chosen field and the low-cost paths to their goals. In a Community College Spotlight post, Impossible dreams: Squash or support?, community college instructors talk about their students' wildly unrealistic goals and salary expectations.

While the queries are intended to be provocative, they struck me as remarkably on-point. The thing is that claimants like being indulged, advocates like creating crises, and pols love to give stuff away. The fact is that getting an American college education for no more than ten percent of your annual post-college income is, by any historic norm, a ridiculously good deal. Moreover, by the time we consider low-cost post-secondary options and the fact that debt-laden students have frequently chosen to eschew cheaper alternatives for pricier options, one can argue that much of the problem is nothing more than students dealing with the consequences of short-sighted or unwise decisions.

It’s a free country, and people have the right to make choices they may regret—but the regret shouldn’t discharge their obligations or make them the government’s problem. The thing is, our leaders have little cause to tell voters to suck it up or to deal with it. The result is that advocates use cherry-picked lending figures to demand stuff, and craven pols eagerly express sympathy by ladling up the goodies—and borrowing to pay for ‘em. And nobody blows the whistle on any of this, because doing so is to assure that one will be labeled heartless, mean-spirited, an enemy of higher education, and, for good measure, an elitist.