The average trajectory for a successful scientist somewhere in Europe could be as the following:
age 18-22: paying high tuition fees just to get an undergraduate degree
age 22-30: post-graduate studies, i.e. MSc/PhD, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of €600 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for €2000 to €2500 per month (after paying taxes obviously)
age 36-43: lecturer (or assistant professor) at a good, but not great, university for €45,000 per year
age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smart cookie you sat next to on high school. He got into a high profile university (e.g. University of Edinburgh) to get his undergrad degree. He got a postdoc at University of Cambridge. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at UCL. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
