With many young adults struggling to pay off student loans, anti-poverty advocates launched an online campaign Monday to call on the government to join other developed countries in instituting a scholarship program.

The online campaign on petition forum Change.org comes amid rising criticism that Japan lags significantly behind other industrialized nations in investing in efforts to help financially underprivileged students pursue university-level education.

The underlying problem, the campaigners said, lies in what is commonly called the shogakukin system, which uses a word that literally means scholarship but essentially consists of student loans in disguise.