$250,000 in student debt after 13 years...

[freeloader]

The woman in the original story has certainly dug herself into a deep hole.  I suppose I can understand her impulse to get the PhD and maybe she's getting a good deal with one of those PhD stipends, etc. but even then. she's only delaying her debt repayment.  The only thing that I can imagine that might help is 
Public Service Loan Forgiveness | Federal Student Aid

Given that public health is her area of study, this is probably the best option she has.

Except, her PhD will be in English: 

“Janell Tryon is a PhD student in English with a concentration in American Studies, studying concepts of home and homelessness. She plans on tracing the racist and xenophobic history of housing policy and mining contemporary American literature for examples of resisting state confinement and shelter. She spends her free time trying to keep her sourdough starter alive and biking.”

https://www.umass.edu/english/graduate-students-english

I can only be so critical.  I almost completed a PhD in history, which has similar marketability to an English PhD.  Money has never been a huge driver for me, which partly explains why I initially studied business and economic history rather than business and economics. Clearly, money doesn’t seem to be her prime driver. No issue with that. 

That said, I managed to get through 4 years of undergrad and 10 years of grad school with around $12,000 in student loans. In part, that was because of my understanding that, if I finished my PhD and got the “dream job” as a tenure-track assistant professor of history, I was going to be making in the $40-60k range, almost certainly, unless I ended up in the Bay Area, NYC, or similar.  It is pretty darn irresponsible to go into that type job with the kind of debt this young woman has.