People care more about their position relative to others than their actual income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_income_hypothesis

Because of the reasons listed in my original post. If I had to sacrifice time and money to graduate from college to qualify for a job and an arbitrary raise provides the same compensation to someone who does not have a college degree, it devalues my degree. On top of that, besides the degree getting devalued, I still have the original student debt amount.