[mosaiclifestyle]

This is a doctrine that now starts with kids at a very young age. People reverse engineer their way into that Ivy League school, then the herd mentality drives them into finance / consulting, etc.

The further they go down this road, the greater the perceived risk of leaving it becomes. Add in the financial aspect for many, and you get the golden handcuffs. Spend too many years here and I suspect it just becomes your entire worldview, especially as your social circles thin out and become more homogeneous, especially in environments like business school.

In my own experience those who eventually escape are often driven out by what can be the psychological stress of conformity, or the realization that they are far from what they had wanted for their lives 5, 10, 15 years ago.