I just watched a video about the Day in the Life of a College Student at a university I'm familiar with and was impressed with how wasteful it was. The guy drove to the gym, back home for breakfast, to class, to lunch, to class again, to a fancy dinner + drinks, then finally home. Almost certainly all bikeable too. No wonder student debt is so crazy now if they're spending $30-40+ per day on unnecessary expenses. If you do that every day (unlikely, of course) when getting a four year degree you'll come out of college $30k poorer.
When I was in college my daily transportation routine involved almost entirely biking or walking. Food was included in my rent so I would either bring something with me or come home for lunch/dinner.
I did a year at McMaster university. The kids there were often rich, from overseas. There were more BMWs and Mercedes in the student parking lot than the teacher parking lot. This kind of lifestyle was the norm. My classmates had never heard of OSAP (Ontario student loans), and some of them were horrified to see me working on campus. They were attending one of the world premier universities, they honestly believed that everyone on campus was a multi-millionaire.
At Carleton things were more laid back. Lots of kids living with their parents, biking or busing everywhere. Lots of students on OSAP.
At the local community college everyone was working while in school, so that also made a huge difference. It was common to hear a student calling in to work to rearrange shifts so they could write a midterm. Many of them biked or bused, but if you're working full time while in school full time, a car is almost mandatory in Ottawa.
There was a published paper on the OECD site about inequality and how it's going to affect senior citizens going forward. It mentioned, in passing, that income inequality is already more starkly noticeable among the 20-35 age group than it currently is among the 60-75 age group. (The difference between a rich and poor pair of 20 somethings is bigger than the difference between a rich and poor pair of 80 somethings.)
For those of you who like graphs and charts,
http://www.oecd.org/social/preventing-ageing-unequally-9789264279087-en.htmpg 29: "Moving from the average across ages, as illustrated above, to specific age groups shows that the younger age groups are now the most unequal. Figure 1.7 shows that, on average across countries, income inequality among those aged 20-14 is about 6 percentage points - or about 24% - higher for the generations born in the 1980s than it was for those born in the 1950s. Some major trends, such as teh development of education and changes in household structures across generations, are likely to have influenced these developments. Inequality in middle age (45-49 years) also increased especially between the generations born from the 1930s to the 1960s, for older groups, by contrast, it remained broadly stable. This means that inequality among people starting their working life is now already much higher than among today's elderly, which is in stark contrast to patterns observed in the past."