I don't think this is supported by the data. My generation is neither ungrateful for their educational opportunities nor unwilling to fulfill their obligations. They have delayed having children, marrying, buying homes, and are the first generation to have lower real income than their parents. This is despite having fought the longest wars in American history. I'm sure there are plenty of slugs from every generation; our prisons are full of them. But given that we were not of age to vote and prevent prior generations from stacking the deck against us, I have no problem being angry with people who refuse to acknowledge that we got a raw deal.
This is different from welfare because it is the bad policies of the government that have caused higher education to rise in price faster than virtually any good or service in the economy, including health care. Older generations lack perspective because they were able to work a summer job to pay for their higher education, take modest loans, or many of them took the many jobs that were then-available to people without formal higher education that no longer exist on the scale needed for full employment.
Welfare gives people something for nothing. If delaying virtually every adult financial milestone and making less money than our parents isn't enough for you to see this as a problem, likely nothing will.
I found a path out of my debt prison, and it involves making less money than I made before I ever went to college or graduate school. For 8 years, among other things, I taught police academies full of people who were getting paid to attend. They could have absolutely gone to a university and paid cash for the same education, but the city/county decided that the only way they'd ever have a sufficient number of recruits was to subsidize their education (and in fact now they are offering huge signing bonuses and lowering the standards and they are still short). The acadmies I taught are not, however, the only way to become certified. It's just the one they took advantage of, because there is incentive for them to do it. Why would someone pay cash for something that they can get paid to do at someone else's expense?