"Fresh-faced?"

I think it's reasonable to expect that graduates have a significant number side projects by the time they exit. Anything less seems indicative of a lack of interest.

I think reasonable people can disagree on your point.

I can imagine many scenarios where someone wouldn't have a plethora of published side projects coming out of school.

Such as?

It seems absurd that someone could intend to seek employment in this industry (and likely spend 4 years studying it and it's related fields) without producing anything real.

We have a university here locally that is a join venture between two other major universities in the state, including sharing professors, curriculum and resources. It draws many, many working adults (as well as traditional students). There are many such students who work and attend school full time to get their degree and have not had time to do a bunch of side projects. Life gets in the way sometimes. Plus, you don't need someone whose whole life/only hobby is programming. My standards don't include "must spend free time practicing their trade".

If one has open-source projects, great. If not that doesn't even come close to excluding them.

It does seem crazy, but anecdotally, it's pretty common.

The number of people in my CS degree that couldn't program - at all - was astounding. I did a final year subject on databases, and ended up in an end of semester group project with two students that didn't know the difference between a table, and a database.

I can see how an overachieving/motivated 11th grader (you) might think this, but it is neither what "reasonable" hiring managers expect or what the average student produces. Maybe the situation is different at top-10 colleges, but my experience is that maybe 10-15% of a cohort will have >= 1 side project upon graduation. Most students don't even bother learning languages outside of what's taught in class.