alt Hacker News> You are very off (unfortunately) about how little PhD students are being paid
All in costs for a PhD student include university overheads & tuition fees. The total probably doesn't hit $150k but is 2-3x the stipend that the student is receiving.
Someone currently working in academia might have current figures to hand.
Worth mentioning that numbers for the US are unlikely to be representative when discussing it as a whole, though might be relevant to this specific case.