Is 24 Too Late to Get a Bachelor’s Degree? Practical Guidance For Parents
Last Sunday, I was folding assorted laundry at my kitchen table, half-watching a rerun of whatever baking show was on, when my daughter Lila slid her phone across the Formica. The screen showed a confirmation email for the bachelor of science in biology program at our state university, starting this fall. She’d just finished her 20-hour shift at the downtown coffee shop, her nails still stained from the lavender latte syrup she makes every Saturday, and she was shifting her weight like she was waiting for me to say something bad. My first thought, uninvited, was: She’s 24. All her friends from high school graduated last year. Isn’t that too late?
After high school graduation, Lila had a full-on panic attack two days before she was supposed to move into the dorms. She said she couldn’t fathom spending four years paying to take classes she didn’t care about just to get a piece of paper she wasn’t even sure she wanted. We agreed on a gap year. That gap year turned into two, then she just kept working, picked up volunteering at the local wildlife rescue on her days off, got her own tiny apartment a 15-minute drive from campus. I never pushed her to go back, but I carried that quiet worry that she’d fallen off the expected path, that she’d regret it later. When she told me she’d applied, that worry bubbled right up to the surface.
I called my cousin Jen, who’s an academic advisor at the local community college, because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing to Lila. I asked her straight up: is 24 too late to start a bachelor’s? Jen didn’t give me that cheesy “it’s never too late” speech you see on Instagram. She told me that 1 in 6 undergrads starting their first bachelor’s at her school is over 22 now, and that number’s gone up every year since the pandemic. She said the biggest mistake parents make is measuring this by the timeline they had when they were 18.
She broke it down pretty simply, and it made a lot of sense. Most 24 year olds starting college don’t have the same growing pains 18 year olds do. They already know how to manage a budget, how to show up on time when they don’t feel like it, and they almost always know exactly what they want to study. Lila’s not going to waste her first two years switching from communications to psychology to business like most of my friend’s kids did. She’s been volunteering with injured birds of prey for two years, she knows she wants to do wildlife conservation, she’s already taken two intro bio classes at the community college that will transfer. That cuts a full semester off her time, so she’ll actually be done at 27, not 28. That’s younger than I was when I had my first kid, so what’s the rush?
From that conversation, I picked up three concrete things any parent can do when their 20-something says they want to start a bachelor’s, that I actually put into practice with Lila. First, bite your tongue if your first thought is about age. Instead of leading with a question that sounds like doubt, just say “tell me how you worked this out” and let them talk. For me, that let Lila explain she’d been planning this for 18 months, saving half her tips every week, talking to an admissions counselor at the university back in March. I didn’t have to fix anything, I just had to listen.
Second, sit down with them to sort through transfer credits and niche scholarships. Most people don’t know that even a few random classes taken at a community college years earlier can transfer to a four-year program, cutting down on time and tuition. We spent two hours one night going through the university’s transfer credit database, making sure those two classes Lila took for fun actually counted toward her degree. Then we searched for scholarships for non-traditional students under 30, not just the general ones that thousands of high school seniors apply for. She found three that are specifically for people starting college after a gap of more than two years, and she’s already submitted her applications.
Third, let them lead on finances. Don’t offer to pay for everything unless they ask, and don’t make them feel like they have to go full time to get the degree done fast. Lila told me she doesn’t need me to cover full tuition, her savings and any scholarship money will cover most of it, and she’ll keep working 20 hours a week. That works for her, because she likes the steady income and doesn’t want to graduate with $30,000 in debt. If that means she takes an extra semester to finish, that’s fine.
I still catch myself thinking about it some nights. What if she changes her mind halfway through? What if she can’t get a job after she graduates? But Jen pointed out that 22 year old graduates deal with that same uncertainty all the time. No age guarantees a smooth path. I used to think that starting later means you have less time to work in your career, but that math doesn’t add up if you start when you know what you want. If Lila knows she wants conservation work, she won’t spend the first five years after college bouncing between unfulfilling jobs trying to figure it out, like a lot of 22 year old graduates do.
We’re still waiting for the acceptance letter, which should come next month. The stack of college brochures is still sitting on my kitchen counter, next to the coffee mug with a ring around the bottom and Lila’s cat’s favorite toy mouse. I still have those quiet moments of worry, the ones that come from growing up thinking everyone has to graduate college by 22, get a job by 23, settle down by 27. But then I see Lila’s face when she talks about getting to take ornithology next spring, when she tells me about the red-tailed hawk she helped rehabilitate last month that’s now flying free, and I remember that the timeline I had for her was just a story I made up when she was 18. It doesn’t have to be her story. Right now, this is what she wants, and that’s enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Is 24 Too Late to Get a Bachelor’s Degree