As a graduate of Dartmouth College who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the author launched her academic career with a total debt load of over $105,000. As soon as she started working as a full-time faculty member six years ago, she began to make payments of between $600 and $1,000 a month to creditors, depending on what her current salary was. Today, she is still nearly $38,000 in debt. She blames what has become a universally acceptable degree of debt now required for getting a graduate degree for keeping her in debt. In this article, the author argues that today's graduate programs at purportedly "non-elite" institutions are producing a debtor nation of academics who face not only diminishing prospects of getting full-time, tenure-track jobs, but a decade or more of long-term debt levels that exceed $50,000 to $100,000. She discusses the effects of such a high degree of indebtedness in the lives, productivity, and outlook of young faculty.