Is 24 Too Old to Get a Bachelor’s Degree? A Guidance Counselor’s Take
The bell had just rung for dismissal last month, and I was scraping a crumb of peanut butter granola bar off my guidance desk when Maya knocked. She graduated from our high school six years ago, so I was surprised to see her leaning in the doorway, boots still dusty from the job site she’d left an hour early. She’d been working for her dad’s construction company ever since her mom’s breast cancer treatment wiped out their savings right after graduation. Now she wanted to apply for a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, and she had one question looping through her head: Am I too old at 24 to start this?
She said her coworkers kept teasing her that she’d be the “grandma” of her freshman cohort, that all the other students would be 18, fresh out of high school, with nothing to do but party and study. By the time she graduated, she’d be 28, while everyone her age who went the traditional route would already have four years of work under their belt. I’d heard the exact same worry just two months earlier from Karen, a parent of a 24-year-old son named Liam who’d quit his full-time landscaping job to pursue a bachelor’s in environmental science. Karen was convinced he was throwing away four years of seniority and falling hopelessly behind the “normal” timeline.
I’ve been working in high school guidance for 12 years, and I’ve seen every age start a first bachelor’s degree. The 24-year-old question comes up so often because it’s the first age where people who took a non-traditional path after high school start feeling like they’ve missed their window. I still remember Ty, who came to me for advice back in 2016. He was 24, just discharged from the Army after four years of service, and he wanted to start a nursing degree. He was just as worried as Maya about being the oldest guy in the room.
What stuck with me was what he told me after his first semester. He couldn’t believe how many 18-year-olds in his classes skipped lectures, forgot to turn in assignments, and changed majors twice in a year because they had no clue what they wanted to do after graduation. Ty already knew he wanted to work in pediatric urgent care—he’d spent his deployment taking care of injured kids in his unit, and that experience made it clear for him. He showed up to every class, worked 20 hours a week as a hospital tech to cut down on student debt, and graduated on time. He’s now been working full time as a nurse for three years, and he’s never once said he regrets starting at 24.
The biggest mistake parents make when they ask this question is measuring their kid’s path against the 18-straight-to-college timeline that was common when they were growing up. That timeline never was the only path, and it’s even less common now. What I tell parents who come to me with this worry, in concrete terms, is to swap out their anxious “is this too late?” framing for a few small, actionable steps instead.
First, instead of leading with “Aren’t you starting too late?” ask your kid “What made you want this degree right now?” Age isn’t a good predictor of whether someone will finish a degree—clarity of purpose is. A 24-year-old who’s worked full time for six years and knows exactly what career they want the degree for is far more likely to finish than an 18-year-old who picked a major because their parents told them to. Second, if you want to help, don’t just say “I support you” if you can’t pay full tuition. Offer to sit down for an hour and go through the FAFSA line by line, or help them compare tuition costs for in-person vs. online programs at local colleges. Most 24-year-olds who’ve been working know how to manage a budget, but they’ve never filled out financial aid forms before, and that one hour of help takes a huge weight off. Third, if they’re nervous about fitting in, suggest they reach out to the admissions office and ask to sit in on one or two intro classes before they enroll. At most public colleges these days, almost 40% of undergrads are over 22, so 24 is barely older than average for many programs. They’ll almost certainly find other students in the same boat.
It’s not all smooth sailing, of course. Maya already had to turn down a girls’ beach trip next month because her first midterms fall that week. Ty missed a lot of family birthdays and holiday dinners while he was juggling work and classes. It’s a tradeoff, same as any big life choice. But I’ve never had a 24-year-old who finished their degree tell me they regretted starting because they were too old. I have had dozens of 30 and 40-year-olds tell me they regretted waiting when they were 24, because they thought they were too old.
Maya sent me a photo last week. It’s a blurry phone pic of her new student ID, grinning against the blue background, and in the background of the shot you can see her study group: one 19-year-old freshman straight from high school, one 32-year-old mom of two, and Maya, 24, right in the middle. She texted that half the people in her intro education class are over 21, and no one has even asked how old she is, let alone cared. I still get a couple of these questions a month from anxious parents, wondering if their kid is throwing their life away by starting college at 24. I tell them what I told Karen: your kid will be 28 in four years either way. If they get a degree at 28, they’re a 28-year-old with a degree. If they don’t, they’re still 28, just without the degree. Right now, Maya’s just taking it one week at a time, and so far, it’s working.
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