Universities should be more than toll gates

I know someone who started uni at 24, after 7 year of working as line cook then chef. She seems to have the opposite experience that you have. She has had a lot of support from the professors in her first year, and only wanted to reach bachelor. Then the seocnd year came, she started to really understand biology, and changed her goals from nutrition to pharmaco/biochemistry, changing her courses with the help of the admin. Then in Master 1, she once again pivoted towards genetics (therapeutic engineering to be exact), and it seems her M2 will push her toward a doctorate in genetics and anthropology, which is yet another pivot.

For myself uni wasn't a success, and maybe we whould require children to work before getting to uni if they don't know what they wat to do yet, but at least for some, Uni is great and function exactly as it should.

> maybe we whould require children to work before getting to uni if they don't know what they wat to do yet

You can easily get lots of information about various jobs using some magic technology called the "world wide web", so there is basically no need to work before university to get an informed opinion. If you are incapable of doing this, you likely simply don't "belong" into a university.

Looking back at my life, the problem is rather that the only kind of internships from which you really "profit" because they extend your perspective, are basically "unreachable" if you don't have parents or friends who are insanely well-connected in upper circles.

Also, if you worked in some "practical" area before going to a university, you will in my opinion become a much more misanthropic and arrogant person because you have seen how "stupid" the people were at that job. The university bubble helps you to avoid a lot of contact to "ordinary" people, and instead puts you into an environment where most people around you are much smarter, and you have to "fight hard for survival" (passing a class; passing a class with a decent mark; ...). Because this experience is very humbling (intendedly so), this makes you a much a much more humble person in your defining years.