Of course there is always more entitlement in every generation.. I thought that is how it works, My grandparents thought we had it easy and asked for too much.
These days there are more ways to express your entitlement and so this amplifies the normal generational increase in entitlement and hey presto.. we have this thread.
For the record, I have no issues, they can bleat and moan about wages like everyone before them has done, its the market that will decide and I'm fine with that. I pay very junior people a really good starting salary for our industry/area and despite it being more (inflation adjusted) than I started on, so what, we need good people, they are good people.. problem solved.
However, on the entitlement front, I will say that for juniors in my department, there are a disproportionate amount of entitled behaviour from them.. one started his own 'side hustle', advertising on linkedin, facebook etc, and thought he we should allow him to use company resources (time, software etc) as he felt that overlapped with his day job, and got quite angry about it when I had to politely explain things. Another kept asking for pay rises 'because all my friends earn more'.. his friends were project managers that attract higher salaries.. I was a bit taken aback, I told him we operate a meritocracy, so as he gained and demonstrated more experience we'd look after him.. Which we did, he increased his pay by 30% in 2 years with two merit rises.. ironically he then left anyway (no surprise) as he found somewhere offering the same pay for less work.. He still talks to his ex-colleagues and already he's moaning it's even worse and he will have to wait 2 years to get a small merit rise of 5% on top of the normal inflationary/company wide pay rises and that's only if he does well at his performance review..
I agree on the Uni front.. what I find appauling is Uni's exploiting it crazily.. Plymouth Uni for example (I did my degree there) has spent millions on a visitors centre and student accomodation blocks.. I was helping someone apply for a course there and the way they tried to get them in debt was sickening.. they sneakily try to push them hard to be in halls of residence at £800 a month, they explain how much more they can get for 'computer suppliers' and list iPhones and iPads and all the 'tech' stuff as examples of what to spend the money on, and the massive (and expensive) visitors centre is all about trying to hook people in and then hammer them for every penny, I was there when they inferred not to worry about the debt, might as well take as much 'free money' as they can as they only needed to pay it off if they got a really well paid job anyway and then they'd not even notice it.. yada yada yada, it was like walking in to brighthouse and getting 30% APR credit thrown at you to buy an overpriced TV..