Existential Questions II: The Personal Side

Last time I promised to go into why I think employment is so important. Obviously this has more to do with the personal and psychological side of life than the material one, at least in school-- the meal plan would let me survive, but that's immaterial for this discussion.
Essentially, from the perspective of society, sending high-school graduates to college is a way of manufacturing people who can function independently--who can live on their own, and to a certain extent provide for themselves. This isn't inherent to human beings, but it seems inherent to the modern, more rootless society we live in here, in which workers move around the country more frequently than ever before. Not only is it bad at a personal level for students to cultivate dependence on parents and family, but it's also bad for society: it's not conducive to making people who can stand on their own two feet in the modern economy.
This is why I've been really disturbed to hear from a lot of adults when I go home something to this effect: "Oh, you go to school in D.C.? That's so far! I could never let my child go that far away from me." I used to chalk this up to simple concern that wouldn't have any bearing on reality, but looking at the places my high school classmates ended up at, it seems to be disturbingly true. Many state schools now sell the fact that they're "close to home" as an advantage-- I guess that way you don't have to worry about doing your own laundry, shopping or anything like that too often.
Don't get me wrong--I don't mean to disrespect the choices made by other students; I could easily have ended up much closer to home and ended up going back much more frequently. But I know that it wouldn't be good for me as a person; college can be a "growth experience" for people and we should let it be.
What does this have to do with employment, especially summer employment like I was talking about in my previous post? It's a question that comes down again to "independence". I've seen people who have to call home and ask their parents for money; I don't really know why, but doing that just feels wrong to me. Increasingly, we have as a society come to feel a sense of entitlement. My feeling is that if people aren't willing to work for what they want they shouldn't expect anyone, especially not their parents, to bail them out.
Of course, I can't in fairness say that everyone can be expected to jump right into life as a pseudo-adult. But to deliberately construct a college experience that keeps people dependent strikes me as backwards.

Comments? Feelings? Responses? Let me hear them at ash1290@gwmail.gwu.edu.

--Adam