This article may help you understand the whole grad student racket better.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...

Thanks. Makes things clear what's going on. Does this have a HN discussion thread?

Not that I'm aware of. Most of the time when I talk about this topic it gets downvoted pretty hard. Part of the program not covered in the article was to train the population that anyone questioning those policies is the usual litany of bad words. I was very careful this time not to even hint at the content of the article. That seems to have helped.

The wage demands are significantly higher than the money that’s being offered here.