Well it sounds like you think you'd find it easier to gain employment with a degree. However there are probably a few options for you depending on where you are; some schools around here teach compressed courses that only run for 5-6 weeks. I always found those a lot easier to succeed in as I wasn't given enough time to really jack off. Instead I was always immersed. Or maybe you could explore ways to avoid paying so much money for a degree, like maybe just get an associate's from the local community college, or seeing if your employer (assuming you have one) might help with tuition payments.

I'm not saying it's ideal, but I will say that I am the flip side of your coin: I got hired in a mid-level back office position at the age of 20. I didn't have a single peer who wasn't a decade or more older than me, and many coworkers had worked their way up to the job over the course of decades-long careers. They hired me and 2 other fresh college grads, and the job ad specifically targeted "recent college graduates" for the position. From what I understand yeah, they were making a move to "professionalize" or whatever the place and wanted more degrees. They probably also figured a person with a new degree was pretty likely able to execute the job, but for significantly less than all those lifers. I never found out, but I'd hazard a guess my salary at that place was half or less of each of my "lifer" coworkers.

I don't know if there is an assumption of being dumber, as you say, but I would say that in corporate America people really care about degrees, certificates, and stacking letters after their name. I think it's very much in the culture to care about whether a candidate has a degree , even to the point where that care can blind a hiring manager to good candidates because of the perceived 'hole' on a resume.

The funny thing is that to be honest it's not like people talk about their degrees at work much so I wouldn't be able to tell you, day-to-day, if a lot of my coworkers got one or not. I think I know the status of about 5 of them out of 30ish.