The projected salaries for my field when entering grad school (2015, before Trump tanked public health funding & infrastructure) were a lot rosier than when I graduated. Grad loans have a much higher interest rate than undergrad, and even with a paying internship and some scholarships, it was nearly $100,000 in 2 years.

I know you have some weird axe to grind all over this thread, but my story isn’t absurdly anomalous. Plenty of students were assured that it was worth the cost for the magic of job security and exponential earnings growth that never materialized. I went to the best school in the country for my field, because quality matters for professional degrees. It wasn’t my school’s fault I graduated into an unprecedentedly awful job market. Public health was a sure bet, as what kind of buffoon wouldn’t know to invest in maintaining a basic, functioning public health sector?

In 2015 my field & concentration should have been a funnel to a minimum $65k job to start, whereas when I left grad school the outlook was nearer $35-40k, if you could find a position still receiving secured federal funding. Pile up the last 4 years of highly qualified graduates and now the field is severely under-funded and flooded with desperate cut-rate recruits. And the student loans are an albatross around our necks, removing any leverage we may have had to push for fairer wages. And now we would be awful un-“heroic” monsters to “exploit” the pandemic by asking for raises.