Not everyone looking to have a repo today and joining a team tomorrow where it will pay off for Github is a student. Being able to pay doesn't mean the same as willing to do so, particularly if they've not used github yet and have no idea if it will be worthwhile.

Not every young developer is a student. If Github had offered free private repos a couple of years ago I'd probably be using it instead of Gitlab.

Yeah, but it's only the case up until you graduate, at that point you are forced to pay or move out.

I'm one of them that moved to Gitlab afterward and right now I currently hesitate to go back to Github, even if its free.