College tuition is becoming more expensive, causing student load debt to increase dramatically over the past ten years, delays in home ownership, and a rise in hungry and homeless students attending America's community colleges.

Many colleges have implemented changes to address this, such as Indiana University's recent two year tuition freeze, but nonetheless student debt and college costs are still rising consistently each year.

This week on Noon Edition our panel discussed the current efforts to address student loan debt improve financial literacy before students reach serious financial trouble.

Currently one in three people with student loans are delinquent and one in five are actually in default, and Americans between 25-34 years old have some of the highest rates of bankruptcy.

Jim Kennedy, Vice President of Student Services and Systems at Indiana University, spoke on the reasons behind this.

"The students that graduate do fairly well. A lot of these students are ones that start that don't finish or have to take a break from college or decide they're not going to attend college and finish their degree. Especially students that only attend one or two semesters. This isn't really an issue for the Bloomington campus, it's more for maybe our regional campuses," he said. "Our average debt here at Indiana University is $27, 901. That's averaging all of our campuses together with in and out of state students, which equates to about about a $296 a month payment for 10 years."

Jason Bearce of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education discussed a possible starting point for educating potential college students about what lies ahead with them in order to ensure they go into a field that is best for them, therefore avoiding unnecessary financial burden.

"Certainly we can't expect all students to leave high school with a very specific understanding of what their major or career path is going to be. But I think we can do a lot more as a state and local schools in terms of providing structured experiences for students to do more intentional career exploration," he said. "We graduate a lot of students who leave high school with either a very narrow, limited view of what the opportunities are out there and we also graduate a lot of students who leave high school with misconceptions about what their aptitude is or what they're industry opportunities are, so I think we can do a lot more on the front end."

Author and documentarian Adam Carroll found in researching his recent documentary that there is not a single reason why college tuition is increasing. He instead felt that students finding the right career

"The best possible thing you can do is live like a broke college kid for the next two years of your life. You're used to it already. You shouldn't be expecting a new car and a new house and dinners out when you're 22, 23, 24. You should be putting every extra dime you can at blasting away your student loan debt," he said.