"harsh expectations" is correct and usable in written English.
It is often used to refer to expectations that are too demanding or unreasonably high. For example, "The coach set harsh expectations for his team, expecting them to win every game."
Ms. Pribisco, who knows only too well the harsh expectations of physical perfection placed on female dancers by their often male leaders, sees her role as liberator.
Sevigny has described Gallo's movie as "an art film" that "should be playing in museums", not exposed to the harsh expectations of the commercial market.
Businesses are now dealing with buyers who are armed with both information and harsh expectations.
Even at her mother's funeral Patti Davis was moved to speak about her conflicts with her mother, and in print she was even more descriptive of Nancy's harsh expectations.
Being queer is a freedom from all of those harsh norms and expectations that we might measure ourselves against: what a real relationship is, what a real family looks like, what real happiness looks like.
How tragic, then, that life is being made harder for children by both government policy and ever harsher attitudes and expectations.
When an institution and its followers have been held in high esteem because of values and service, and those values and trust are betrayed, the penalties of that betrayal are often harsher than when expectations were low.
After several generations of harsh poverty and diminished expectations, for many children and their relatives here going to school has become a matter of indifference.
Misunderstandings, unspoken expectations and harsh words flood and we are in danger of being swept apart by the current.
This stage of life is about marrying your expectations with harsh reality, or coming to terms with the fact that, as my Mom says, "Not everyone will love you".
The fourth grade failure syndrome refers to a bias in schools (e.g., cultural insensitivity, disproportionately harsh discipline, lowered teacher expectations, tracking black students into special education or remedial classes) that has the cumulative effect of diminishing black students' (especially boys') enthusiasm and motivation for school.
