lol what? Do high schools even have those records anymore a decade plus after the fact?
Everything about the undergrad process seems designed for a 17/18 year old kid who spent the last 4 years grooming themselves for that specifically.
It makes sense of course, as that’s probably the majority of people starting undergrad, but it does suck for anyone else, especially since the system is very bureaucratic and inflexible. See: how the financial aid system determines your dependent status, hint it’s not what the IRS says. It was pretty akward the first time I v tried to go back, and informed adult who had been on my own for some years at that point having to call up my father and see if he was willing to give me all sorts of sensitive information because despite have it paid my own since 18, the education system related me “dependent”. The only logic behind your status is if you’re under 24 or not (with leniency only for extreme situations such as being an orphan, homeless, or having both parents incarcerated)
I have this current theory that there are a lot of domain/industries even in software development are made much harder to get into for the “uneducated” because the companies tend to source less experienced employees exclusively through university hiring pipelines.
Now I have no qualms absolutely tearing into the current implementation of higher education, but I’ve spent most of my life as an observer and I definitely see now some huge benefits of higher education outside a piece of paper and lectures.
My biggest frustration is that non-traditional students (outside a single demographic being ex-military) are thrown to the wayside or straight up scammed by otherwise legitimate colleges. When I first started looking at going back I was dumbfounded when schools were more interested in my high school disciplinary record and not really interested in my established professional and experience.
One popular state research university near me started offering online programs for “professional and non traditional students” but the only degrees offered are “useless liberal arts degrees” (think degrees that are used as the punchline in political slurring battles) or “made up” degrees that aren’t remotely related to any on-campus program, are often worse than the aforementioned liberal arts degreee and are designed for no other reason but to extract money from poor people. A lot of them also have jumped in the bootcamp hype. I can’t tell you how much spam I’ve seen from universities wanting me to join the Cybersecurity bootcamp.
Again this is not your typical For-profit university, this is a respected state school with best on the nation programs in certain areas.