You know (aside from the fact that I was kidding, of course), you're quite right. I thought that the GM in our scenario was explicitly male, but apparently I'm he one who made that assumption, oops!
There's some case to be made for exactly the opposite--at least in a STEM field you're likely to become more employable if you take out loans to finish a grad degree. In the humanities, your immediate job prospects are terrible, plus if you weren't good enough to get someone to fund you, your chance of getting a relevant job after are pretty slim. It's different, of course, if the money isn't meaningful to you for whatever reason...