In this college commencement season, consider this question: What could be worse than leaving campus saddled with lots of loan debt? Try leaving campus with all that debt and no degree.

That’s the predicament a surprisingly high number of low-income students now find themselves in around Massachusetts, the nation’s historic capital of private, nonprofit higher education. Many of these students — and, at some local colleges, most of them — are not graduating. When local colleges ask students from families with a total annual income of $30,000 to pay $100,000 for a bachelor’s degree, is it any wonder that so few of these students are crossing the finish line?

Being “degreeless and in debt’’ could well represent the worst, but least examined, bind of the trillion-dollar American college loan crisis. In today’s Globe Magazine, staff writer Neil Swidey sheds light on the students who believed a bachelor’s degree would deliver the American Dream but are now paying the price for a broken system.