For Applied Maths / Engineering masters and PhDs transitioning into industry, do they still get to use MATLAB? MATLAB seems to be the software of choice in applied math and engineering departments that I know of.  It is a very well-documented software, and so learning how to utilize it, whether it'd be for visualizing data or modeling differential equations, is extremely easy.

But what typically happens for people leaving school and transitioning into industry?  Is MATLAB used in industry at all, or is it more of an Academia thing?  One thing I've noticed is the enormous cost of purchasing MATLAB for personal / non-student usage.  It's like 3 or 4 thousand dollars for a license.  In comparison, a student license costed me $20 for a year.
MATLAB is absolutely used in industry, and I'm certain that's where the majority of the company's income is from. 

If you like, you can think of the extremely cheap student and university usage as a "first taste is free" policy by a dealer: it is highly advantageous to MathWorks to have large numbers of students graduating with experience and comfort in MATLAB. If it's then part of the standard "tools of the trade," that's something that most companies can afford for anyone who clearly needs it to accomplish their job: if a good engineer costs you $300K/year (when salary, benefit, overhead, etc., are all included), and having them use MATLAB makes them a little more efficient, it's well worth it.

Now, if you're not in a job where that cost-benefit tradeoff is clear to the leadership, then you'll have a hard time getting ahold of MATLAB --- and that's what free and open source alternatives (in this case Octave) are for.