A bit ironic that the cut off is 24 and the rough age of full brain maturity is 25 (and loss of parental insurance is 26). So the young adults that had poor/no guidance or made poor decisions in youth don’t get this opportunity once they get their head on straight and realize they need to acquire some skills (pretty common character arc for young men, at least in my circles).
Source: used this to get my PhD coming from factory work. Regret nothing.
This means, that until 24, any aid you get is calculated based on your parents’ income + your income. Even if you’ve been fully independent since 18. Combined with the laughable EFC calculations, this often means less aid available. Of course if you make a middle class income, you probably still won’t qualify for any useful aid after 24.
One is if you are an emancipated adult. The other being if you're married.
There is a legal contract, that is important to people you have never met and will never meet, and, if things are going right, is never at all relevant to your actual marriage in any way except for how it lets you navigate government policy.
There is a social contract, that is important to everyone who acknowledges you as a couple (and also people who have never business seeing you this way).
And there is your actual relationship, which may be enhanced or degraded by the previous two elements, but is somewhat oblique to both.
But at least at community college there were many options. Table tennis once a week for one semester wasn't a huge burden.
1. Born before Jan 1, 2000; 2. Married; 3. Will be attending grad school [2]; 4. Active-duty U.S. military; 5. U.S. military veteran; 6. Have dependent children; 7. Have live-in dependents other than children; 8. Both parents deceased and/or were a foster child or a ward of the court after age 13; 9. Current or former emancipated minor; 10. Legal guardian is someone other than parent or stepparent; 11,12,13. Homeless or at-risk-of-homelessness within the past year (three different routes of determination).
[1] https://studentaid.gov/2324/help/need-parent-info
[2] Graduate students in the U.S. generally don't get the kind of need-based financial aid that undergrads do, though, so this one is often not very helpful.
Because that’s essentially what you were. Hopefully no longer.
I understand why the system is the way that it is — it covers probably 95% of cases correctly — but for those of us who were essentially on our own after 18, it’s terribly unjust.
In my time, factors like age mattered as much as other factors that separated you from "the usual". Nowadays that may not be the case.
https://www.iflscience.com/does-the-brain-really-mature-at-t...
Also, the idea that girls mature faster than boys is a much more a myth; girls mature _physically_ faster than boys but not psychologically.
> There isn't great evidence linking that to anything behavioral though.
Ish. There are behavioral patterns which run parallel to it, most obvious with young male aggression which plateaus in the late 20s before trending down.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-ye...
> When we spoke, I told Steinberg his work had been referenced in this way. “Oh no,” he said, laughing. I then asked whether he had insights about where the figure 25 came from, and he said roughly the same thing as Cohen: There’s consensus among neuroscientists that brain development continues into the 20s, but there’s far from any consensus about any specific age that defines the boundary between adolescence and adulthood. “I honestly don’t know why people picked 25,” he said. “It’s a nice-sounding number? It’s divisible by five?”
> Kate Mills, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, was equally puzzled. “This is funny to me—I don’t know why 25,” Mills said. “We’re still not there with research to really say the brain is mature at 25, because we still don’t have a good indication of what maturity even looks like.”
That said the idea that you do most of your growing up before 25, but still do some of it 18-24 should not be controversial. I wouldn’t use that observation to deny education/apprenticeship benefits from anyone though.
There isn’t some magic age where we suddenly stop screwing up all the time.
In reality, it's just fluctuating. The US's age of majority was 21 until the need for soldiers in WWII drove it to be lowered.
Other cultures have gone even higher.
About the most one could say about 25 is that it's when people's paths start to radically diverge, even amongst the group of people that were previously lumped together as "high achievers." So perhaps the subset of that group who are relatively low-performing — and yet, somehow, high in self-awareness — will wake up and start making changes at 25.
Since you're making this political I'd like to point out that it is conservatives that have started a movement to repeal the 26th amendment and raise the voting age.
Substitute “progressive” for “ever increasing” to retain mostly the same meaning intended.
> You may NOT be eligible for Job Corps if you:
> - Use drugs illegally under federal law
> - Exhibit behavioral problems that could prevent you or others from success in Job Corps
> - Have certain criminal convictions or require court supervision
If you have done any of these before 24, chances are really high that you were otherwise disadvantaged in life. And it's not going to get much easier.
I made the comment in the context of:
If you need a program like this between 16-24 AND you are doing drugs, it's much more likely than not that disadvantages have been heaped upon your life.
https://www.caron.org/addiction-101/teens-young-adults/stati...
I agree there is a difference between those 2 statements. But you never made the quoted statement.
There is a difference between having used drugs "at least once" and "use drugs illegaly" (note the present tense).
How so? If you tried drugs once years ago you meet this requirement for this program. If you are an addict taking drugs daily, you will probably fail the drug tests that I assume they use for this qualification and won't qualify. Of course there is a whole spectrum between thos, but saying half the population has taken drugs at least once is very much not the same thing as saying half the population is regularly using drug.
And the qualification is worse for people who are heavily dependent on drugs, and thus can't easily give it up while going through the program.
> which you are quickly and callously dismissing as less than you
When did I ever suggest they are less than me? I was simply pointing out that saying that half of teens have tried drugs does not imply that half of them would be ineligible for this program due to drug use. In fact the same cited article states 1 in 8 have used drugs in the last year, which is probably closer to an upper bound on who would be disqualified for Job Corps due to drug use.
To be clear, I am opposed to this requirement, because it is a barrier to people who need it most.