I offered lots of opinions in my early 20s. People took them seriously because I was right. One of the things that goes unmentioned is that the latest generation of hires is really smart. Competition at every level of the "educational culling process" has just skyrocketed, and companies have focused more heavily on criteria like school pedigree, etc; at least in professional jobs. Coupled with the low employment rate, the latest generation of hires is statistically likely to have the highest SAT score and GPA's of anyone in the company. Now standardized test scores are correlated with some measures of intelligence, and companies evidently seem to think grades matter otherwise they wouldn't take them so seriously in the hiring process. Bottom line, the common refrain of "I couldn't have gotten hired at my company today" is as a result of increasing competition for schooling and jobs very true.