What kinds of employment do students expect to achieve when they leave the school system, and what are the chances of those expectations being realised? Data on the expectations of 14 year olds are presented for 10 countries—Great Britain, Japan, USA, Chile, India, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Mexico. An examination of student expectations in the context of the opportunities their respective economic systems can offer shows that the expectations of students in ‘developing’ countries have less chance of being realised than the expectations of students in the ‘developed’ countries. Rather than describing these expectations as ‘unrealistic’, the author attempts to explain why students perceive their futures in the way they do by referring to a number of economic and social factors, such as income differentials, security, historical precedent and the right to a nonmanual job, internal school structure and examinations.