The national balloon of collective student debt has seemed ready to pop ever since it reached an astronomical $1 trillion around 2012 — if not well before that. But disturbingly, it's has grown since 2012, and now, you can watch it swell in real time.

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According to the so-called national student loan debt clock, a nerve-wracking debt ticker created for MarketWatch by the education data site StartClass, the collective loan debt is growing at an alarming rate: an estimated $2726.27 every second.

MarketWatch notes that while the rate of growth is absurd, it's actually slightly down from a few months ago, when StartClass began tracking the data. Back then, their calculation did not include the second quarter of 2015. With it included, the debt ticker has slowed by slightly less than $330 per second. Researchers from the site used data from the Federal Reserve from between 2006 to 2015 to calculate the estimated per-second growth (you can read more about their methodology over at MarketWatch).

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The clock visualizes a troubling reality for many recent and not-so-recent graduates, and stands as a looming specter for those continuingor returning to college. According to heaps of research and statistics, student debt and the soaring costs of higher education have started to eat into the financial activity of young people, delaying even the thought of life decisions older generations were already making, such as buying cars or houses, getting married, or having children.

And if the number above seems unsustainable, it may very well be, by some measures: according to the Federal Reserve of New York, 37 percent of the millions of Americans who hold loans are having trouble paying them back.