Nickol Matallana graduated from LaGuardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts in 2007 with a plan to study acting at New York University.

She cobbled together the annual tuition and other costs, then about $40,000 a year, mostly through small federal grants and loans.

She graduated in 2010 with a bachelor of fine arts degree — and more than $100,000 in debt.

“I knew I’d have debt, but I didn’t realize how it would affect me,” said Matallana, now 25. She abandoned acting to focus on film production and has relied on family to help her financially through some rough spots, especially when she moved to Los Angeles to find work in the film industry. She now works as a freelance film producer there and lives with her boyfriend.

“A lot of my friends have it worse than I do” with student debt, Matallana said. “There’s anger, sadness and regret about how it’s affected our ability to take career risks and make investments in our creative development. The scariest thing is that student loan debt ties into every aspect of your financial identity, your credit rating, and your ability to buy a house.”

Student debt in the United States has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, totaling $1.1 trillion in the first three months of 2014, more than credit card debt and second only to mortgage debt. Defaults have also been rising: According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 400,000 student borrowers were in default on $6.1 billion in the third quarter of 2014.

One clear cause is the rise in college tuition, which grew by nearly 80 percent in the decade from 2003 to 2013, even outpacing medical costs.

But Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the Pew Research Center, cites other reasons for the debt increase. More people are enrolling in college than ever before, especially low-income students. And that number bumped higher after the Great Recession of 2008 wiped out jobs. The recession also destroyed household wealth, so that even affluent families had to borrow for college.

In addition, costly for-profit schools — which target low-income and older students eligible for federal loans — have mushroomed.

Fry found that among 2012 college graduates, 64 percent of students at public colleges and universities had taken out loans to pay tuition; 74 percent of students at private universities; and 87 percent of students at for-profit colleges.

Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a public policy organization, said he is particularly troubled by the rise in public university costs as states have slashed their higher-education allocations.

“Less than 30 years ago you could work a full-time, minimum-wage summer job and pay for a year’s worth of tuition at a public university,” Huelsman said. Students then paid 20 to 30 percent of the cost of a public education, but now are paying half.

“Most students, 75 percent, attend public colleges and universities,” he said. “It’s one of the most important avenues of opportunity for upward mobility. State funding cuts and the higher cost of college are a real attack on the idea of public education.”

In his report, “The Affordable College Compact,” Huelsman proposes a federal matching program as an incentive for states to keep costs down by, in essence, agreeing that tuition revenue could not exceed revenue from state appropriations. The amount of federal grants to states for college costs would depend on whether the state has developed policies to ensure the majority of poor and middle class students can attend without incurring debt or financial hardship.

Huelsman would also like to see the government shift funding from for-profit schools to community colleges — and make them free. “Begin there,” he said. “Community college tuition is still low compared to four-year colleges, but most debt incurred by those students is for living expenses, room and board, transportation and child care.”