TRue. I know of at least one person who graduated with a BA and, within 3 years, was making 3.1 million. But "important" is a very slippery term. In my experience teaching a lot of people in this age range, admittedly Canadians not Americans, many of them are searching for "meaning" and something they can commit to. This need for meaning isn't being met in the current Canadian university environment by the older systems which, in many cases, are getting viewed as increasingly irrelevant. That's probably why the Canadian Forces started their new recruitment campaign (warning, it loads slowly).
I've seen studies, and my own experiences with our AFROTC cadets confirm this, that many American students in this age group are also searching for that elusive "meaning."

And as for private sector vs. military job comparisons, I think that people in the military lose sight of their benefits when compared to the "average" private sector worker at the same level. The NCOs in my area complain about their pay and benefits all the time, forgetting that they get a housing allowance (which private sector employers do not provide), bonus pay based on a number of factors, free household goods transportation and moving allowances (again, dream on about this in the average private sector job), decent guaranteed pay raises (which often do not happen in the private sector), and so on. They stopped complaining around me when I showed them that after a few years in the university system, at a fairly high grade, an E-4 who has just been promoted makes more than I do.

The other thing to consider is that most studies of Generation Y (or Millennials or whatever you want to call them) seem to indicate that they have no problem with changing jobs if they feel they've been slighted or disrespected in any way. But, oddly enough, they tend to rise and perform when challenged to do better than they have before. Retooling to match them could prove a very expensive and difficult undertaking.