[DominikR]

> My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education.

Once you reach a certain level in earnings you will have a very hard time finding someone that earns approximately the same amount.

I'm sure that this is currently even harder for men.

In this situation you really only have the choice to either marry down or never have a family of your own and stay alone for the rest of your life.

The thing is, you don't really "marry down". Usually people in the US/EU don't have to fear that they will have to face starvation or anything like that if they marry the wrong women/man so what is marrying down even about?

If one partner already has a lot of resources, why would he/she then require the other partner to be his/her equal in this regard?

When you remove economic resources from the equation you'll find that there are many perfectly fine potential partners out there with all the attributes that one could hope for.