By the close of the 2020 academic year, 3.7 million high school students will have earned their diplomas alongside a collective 3 million college undergraduates. Even as millions of students graduated this spring, COVID-19 was laying bare some harsh truths about the American workforce: the service industry is precarious, the gig economy is insecure, and the skilled trades are considered essential. Young people starting out have difficulty landing jobs even in the best of times, but with 50 million currently unemployed, the current labor market is historically grim. Compounding this is the average student loan debt in America – $32,731 – a burden that can be a barrier to attaining the quality of life that leads people to seek degrees in the first place.