On this past Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” show, John Oliver devoted about two thirds of the show to an extended riff on the student-debt issue.

At one point, he compared taking on student debt to getting a sexually transmitted disease: “Essentially, student debt is like HPV. If you go to college, you’re almost certainly going to get it. And if you do, it will follow you for the rest of your life.”

Oliver not only highlighted the dramatic increases in student debt over the past decade but, much to his credit, linked the increases to reductions in state support for higher education, which he characterized as resulting much more from ideological priorities than from fiscal necessities.

Here’s a link to the full “Last Week Tonight” segment on student debt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8pjd1QEA0c