Don't Think You'll Get a Good Job? Better Drop Out

            When I was walking down the hallway the other day, a friend of mine was complaining that she was “so done with school”. I hear this type of complaint all the time, and if I’m being honest, I’m guilty of throwing this sort of sentiment around every now and then. This comment means anything from being stressed over an assignment to getting a bad grade on a test, but I’m of course never actually “done with school”.

            When I was thinking about it, I realized that I don’t personally know anyone who’s been actually done with school, meaning that they decided to drop out. Beyond that, other than Grease’s Beauty School Dropout scene I’ve never even really heard anyone discuss dropping out of school. That led me to wonder if this is because this isn’t as big of a pressing issue as it used to be or just because it’s not as common where I live.

            As it turns out, a student drops out of school ever 29 seconds in America. That’s more than 7,000 a day and over a million students a year. So why didn’t I know that this was such a huge problem in America?

            When looking into this, I learned that one of the main causes for students to drop out of high school is when they have lower occupation aspirations. In other words, students who have the perception that they will not have high-income jobs are more likely to drop out of school. However, by dropping out of school these students are significantly lowering their chances to eventually have a high paying job, since most of them require a diploma.

            I believe that this mentality is setting up students from low- income families for failure. These students are 10.5 times more likely to drop out of high school than high-income families and I think that it is due to their environments. If a child comes from a high-income family, they see adults who are successful in their fields and therefore have no reason to believe that they themselves cannot be successful. However, if a child comes from a low-income family, then they may not have the same role model as a child from a high-income family and may not be as likely to believe that they will be able to be financially successful in the future.            

            I think that in order to combat this divide then these students need role models of people who have created successful careers from less than ideal situations to show that it’s possible. People like Chris Gardner who rose all the way from being homeless to being one of the most successful businessmen in the world.