I mean isn’t that literally ageism? I don’t have any opinion on whether it’s acceptable or not here but come on…

There's also no rules saying middle aged adults cannot be college students. The only agist policy here is that you need to be 18 to apply, and nobody bat their eye at that.

Yes there are. A 50 year old man cannot enter Harvard college.

1 in 10 college students in the US is 40 or older

That’s not relevant - the schools in the area do not have undergraduates in their middle age.

Middle aged college students usually attend extension schools part of the university, but not part of the undergraduate college.

In any case there’s no strict limitation on being an undergraduate at say 60 (I believe Harvard Colleges oldest graduate was in their 80s), but it’s so exceptionally rare it’s ageism.

There’s no reason why one would need to be an undergraduate.

Why not?

That’s simply their rule.

Where is this rule? Even in your other reply you say there's "no strict limitation" so it's not a "rule", just a trend.

Dorm rules mainly. Like I mention in a sibling comment, given the demographics and the arbitrariness of the decision it’s effectively ageism without being explicit.

I do think you are entitled to filter for a specific age group implicitly, but it doesn't make it any less discriminatory.

Example: statistically the odds of someone graduating from college being over 30 are low. Therefore if I claim that I hire college graduates I get to also filter implicitly by age.

Then the question is: assuming an inherent bias of sample, is it desirable or undesirable to introduce a "function" that attempts some mitigation? I see the "functions" that attempt to mitigate sexism, racism but not ageism.

It feels like companies or organizations are just fine with slapping a paragraph at the end of an announcement that parrots "we are inclusive trust us" without any real adjustment and call it a day.