At this week's presidential town hall debate in New York, the very first question came from a worried, 20-year-old college student. Jeremy Epstein stood up and asked Mitt Romney and President Obama how he will be able to support himself after school, when professors, neighbors and others tell him he has little chance of getting a job. The question channeled the anxiety many college students in Maine express, as they weigh who to vote for in the presidential, senate and congressional races. As Jay Field reports, their worry about finding work is compounded by the growing amount of student loan debt they're carrying.

Paul Griffin is grabbing lunch with a few friends from his music education program at the University of Maine. Griffin is only in his second year at Orono, but the student loan bills are already piling up.

"Probably by the time I graduate with my undergrad I'm going to be $30,000 in debt," he says.

Debt is also piling up for Sarah Faulkingham of Auburn. "I don't get approved for any financial aid because my parents make too much. So I only have to apply for loans. And they only approve me for so much. And then I have to pay the rest myself."

Faulkingham, who's majoring in business and marketing, pays $2,300 out of pocket each semester and will owe around $20,000 in student loans when she graduates.

Sophmore Stephanie Beatrice, who's also studying music education, is an out-of-stater. It costs the Massachusetts native $40,000 a year to attend UMaine.

"Just in my first year alone, I already have $10,000 in loans, just for my first year," she says. "And then I want to go to graduate school eventually, and I don't know if I'll have the money for that."

The kind of financial hurdles facing Griffin, Faulkingham and Beatrice have quickly become the norm for millions of students across the nation. In a new report, the Institute for College Access and Success finds that two-thirds of those who graduated college in 2011 did so carrying student loan debt.

Graduates owed an average of nearly $27,000, a 5 percent increase over the previous year. The rapid growth of student loan debt has attracted the attention of political candidates up and down the ballot.

Mitt Romney:  "When I was governor of Massachusetts, to get a high school degree, you had to pass an exam. If you graduated in the top quarter of your class, we gave you a John and Abigail Adams Scholarship - four years, tuition free, to the college of your choice in Massachusetts, it's a public institution. I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing."

Barack Obama:  "Governor Romney talked about he wants to make Pell Grants and other education accessible for young people. Well, the truth of the matter is, that's exactly what we've done. We've expanded Pell Grants for millions of people, including millions of young women."

That's President Obama and Gov. Romney, responding to questions at Tuesday night's debate. The federal Pell Grant program gives students with financial need money to attend college. Unlike a loan, a Pell Grant doesn't need to be repaid.
Gov. Romney has previously criticized the the Obama administration's expansion of Pell Grants as unsustainable. And the budget written by Romney's running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, would make the grants available to fewer of the America's neediest students.

"We do need help from somewhere, whether it's the government or private industries," says Robert Griffin, the music ed major.  Griffin says he's following the presidential campaign, in part, because of his mounting debt. Recent data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that nine percent of students defaulted on federally-backed loans that came due after October 2009.

To give students some relief and hault the defaults, the Obama administration and Congress changed the rules on how loans can be repaid. New guidelines, taking effect next month, cap payments at 10 pecent of a borrower's discretionary income and forgives all remaining debt after 20 years.

That sounds great to Griffin, in theory. "The problem is, where is our governement getting the money to pay?  We're already trillions of dollars in debt.  We don't have money. We're a nation in debt."

Griffin didn't say who he's planning to vote for in November. But Sarah Faulkingham likes that the president has tried to make it easier for students to deal with their debt.

"I definitely will go for Obama," she says, "if that's something that's going to be set in stone. 'Cause if he would, basically, will take that money away, that takes a lot of stress off of me."

In a close election, where young people aren't as energized as they were four years ago, President Obama is hoping to convince more voters like Sarah Faulkingham to turn out for him.