Is 24 Too Old to Get a Bachelor’s Degree? A High School Guidance Counselor Explains
The last meeting of my Wednesday last month ran 20 minutes over, and there was a half-empty cold coffee on my desk and crumbs from a blueberry granola bar stuck to my keyboard when Mara knocked. She’s the mom of Javi, who graduated from our high school three years ago, and she was twisting the frayed blue soccer bracelet Javi gave her for Mother’s Day when he was 12 around her wrist before she even sat down. “Is 24 too late to start a bachelor’s degree?” she asked, before I could even offer her a refill.
Javi had left for community college after graduation, dropped out after two semesters because he had no clue what he wanted to study, and’d been working full-time with his uncle’s construction crew ever since. Now he’d decided he wanted to get a bachelor’s in middle school education, and Mara couldn’t stop panicking that he’d thrown away three years, that he’d be 28 before he graduated, that all his peers would be four years ahead in their careers by the time he got his diploma.
I hear this question at least once a month, usually from parents of kids who took a gap year that stretched, worked for a few years before figuring out what they want, took time off to care for a family member, or just couldn’t afford college straight out of high school. Most of the time, the panic isn’t even about the degree itself—it’s about the timeline parents have had stuck in their heads since their kid was in middle school: 18 start college, 22 graduate, get an entry-level job, move up. That timeline worked for some people, but it was never the only way, even when we were young.
A few years back I had another student, Mia, who was 24 when she started her bachelor’s in nursing. She’d worked as a CNA for six years after high school, helped her mom pay for her younger brother’s club soccer fees, and saved up half her tuition before she started. Her mom called me in tears, same as Mara, saying Mia was throwing her life away, she’d never be able to start a family on time, she’d be behind forever. Mia graduated at 28, got a job in the labor and delivery ward at our local hospital, bought a house at 31, had her first kid at 33. Last Christmas she sent me a card, and she wrote that if she’d started at 18, she would have flunked out. She didn’t care about nursing then; she would have just picked it because someone told her it was a stable job. By 24, she knew exactly why she was there.
When Mara asked me what she should actually do, not just if it was too late, I gave her three concrete things to check off that week. First, pull out Javi’s high school transcript and his old community college transcript, and sit down with him to map which credits transfer to the state university he’s looking at. Javi already had two general ed classes done, which would cut a full semester off his time, and his AP bio score from high school still counted, so that was another class out of the way. Second, ask his construction company about tuition reimbursement. A lot of local businesses offer it for full-time employees, even in trades, because they want to hold onto good workers even if they move into different roles later. Turns out Javi’s boss offered 50% reimbursement for any degree related to a job the company needed, which included eventually moving into project management if Javi ever decided teaching wasn’t for him. Third, mute all your kid’s high school friends’ parents on Facebook for six months. So many parents get worked up because they’re scrolling through graduation photos and promotions and comparing that to their kid’s current path, and that’s just not a fair comparison.
A couple days later Mara brought Javi in to meet with me. He had dirt under his fingernails from a job that morning, wore a faded hoodie for the rec soccer league he coaches, and he laughed when I brought up Mara’s worry. “I know what I’m doing this time,” he said. “When I was 18, I went to community college because that’s what everyone told me to do. I skipped class, I partied, I didn’t care. Now I pay my own rent, I know what it’s like to work 40 hours a week just to get a paycheck, and I know I’d rather spend that time working with kids. I’m not behind, I just got three years of figuring out what I don’t want first.”
I’ve noticed that the students who start their bachelor’s in their mid-20s almost always do better than the 18-year-olds who start straight out of high school. They don’t waste semesters switching majors every few months because they picked the first one that sounded cool. They show up to class because they’re paying for most of it themselves, not just borrowing money from their parents or the government without thinking about the payoff. They have more life experience, which makes them better at almost any degree, especially anything in education, healthcare, or social work.
Javi got his acceptance letter two weeks ago, it’s taped to the front of his parents’ fridge right now, and he starts in the fall. Mara still texts me sometimes when that little bit of worry creeps in—last week she said she saw a photo of one of Javi’s old classmates getting accepted to law school, and she felt that familiar twist in her chest again. But she also said she went to Javi’s soccer game last weekend, watched him stop practice to sit down with an 11-year-old who was nervous about scoring, and talk him through it until the kid got the goal, and the whole team cheered. That’s exactly what a good middle school teacher does, she said. He’s already good at it. He just needs the degree to do it full time.
There’s no guarantee it’ll work out perfectly, of course. He might change his mind again, he might struggle with balancing work and classes, he might take an extra semester to graduate. But that’s true for 18-year-olds too, isn’t it? It’s just that no one panics that 18 is too early to start, so no one talks about the uncertainty that comes with starting college at any age. For right now, Mara’s got the acceptance letter taped to her fridge, Javi’s already ordering his textbooks for the first semester, and the question that seemed so scary a month ago is just another step in a life that’s unfolding a little slower than the standard plan.
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