Exactly. I'm a 34, I've been told over and over by employer to get a 4-year degree if I want to advance beyond entry level. I have 13 and a half years of experi

Exactly. I'm a 34, I've been told over and over by employer to get a 4-year degree if I want to advance beyond entry level. I have 13 and a half years of experience at my job, competing companies will not even interview for the equivalent of my current position without a 4-year degree (they'd rather have someone with 6 months experience ad a 4-year degree than someone with 13 and a half years of experience and no degree). I am not CS. So I can spend 4-6 years getting a 4-year degree and taking on 40-60k$ (my state's median household income is 54k!) of debt at 4.53% interest and probably around age 40 be able to compete for jobs with those that are 20-22 (as some kids are now simultaneously graduating high school and receiving associates degrees). At my current employer, moving up one position means a 7% increase in pay... so cool, I'd have 40-60k$ of debt, at 4.53% interest, and my 34k a year would bump up a to 36.4k a year... Yeah, NO. Even internally, training for job-related stuff is only given to those in higher positions... so their degree creates an immediate gap via advantage and then the training they are allowed access creates a further divide, as do awards that are only available at certain levels (get an award for doing X but only people in certain positions are allowed to even do X, someone with an award for X will get preferential treatment over someone without the experience of doing X and without an award for X). So at 34 I could try to go back to school, after 16 years of being removed from an educational setting, and try to learn how to study/write papers/etc and probably waste a couple of grand before I can get back into the groove and walk into my 40's with 1/3 of the cost of a house in debt for a piece of paper that says I toed the line and temporarily memorized random bits of material and finally have that de facto dues card employers require. By the time I pay that debt off I'm probably in my mid to late 50s (while having net less than I was without the degree for at least some of those years) and only have a 4-year degree, while I've spent a decade competing against people with Master's so I'm probably not netting much more per year than I would have been without the degree and will now heavily be fighting ageism and have 5-10 years of work left in me wishing I hadn't spent all of my free time in my mid 30's working on a degree. Efff.