I went to a shitty state college as an undergrad. Shitty state colleges provide as much education as you want, just like elite private colleges. They don't provide the networking. Anyway, the point of this post is not about that.
The point of this post is that all of my fellow shitty state school graduates - even the ones who had less than stellar academic records - thought they could graduate, get a crappy job which would pay the bills, get married by 24, buy a house by 25, have kids by 26, etc. We even graduated into a recession (1993) and we all still thought that!
The reality of those expectations (given what I know, they were pretty realistic, though I suppose the Facebook success story has a self-selection bias) isn't the issue. The point is that people thought that. That was "normal." That's what you did. You went to college, met a spouse, graduated, got a job, got married, bought a ticky tacky house, etc.
The Kids Today don't have those expectations.
