I don’t think my kids are more risk averse, but they certainly have a lot more opportunities available here. I knew I needed to escape from my deeply impoverished home town in the UK and I was never going back after college because there was nothing to go back for. Even so, most people who grew up there didn’t leave. My kids grew up in a place (Silicon Valley) where the main reason to leave is that there’s so much here that it’s too expensive.
My college journey was pretty simple and unlikely to be realistic today. I told my parents (who were teachers though neither had a university degree) when I was 8 that I’d decided to go to Cambridge (as I recall because they were better at rowing than Oxford, though I’d not visited either place). I skipped a grade in elementary school and another in middle school. Fortunately they sent me to a selective middle and high school (90 minutes each way by bus from home) that sent significant numbers each year to Oxbridge (an experience somewhat like “The History Boys” film) and was mostly top of the class in science and math. Applied just to Cambridge at 15 and got in, then took a gap year to work and grow up before I went to college.