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Bypassing high school

Back in February, Bill Gates called high schools "obsolete".  It seems some students agree with him:

It is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland idea. If you do not finish high school, head straight for college.

But many colleges — public and private, two-year and four-year — will accept students who have not graduated from high school or earned equivalency degrees.

And in an era of stubbornly elevated high school dropout rates, the chance to enter college through the back door is attracting growing interest among students without high school diplomas.

That growth is fueling a debate over whether the students should be in college at all and whether state financial aid should pay their way. In New York, the issue flared in a budget battle this spring.

Of course, the question will immediately arise as to whether this is in a dropout’s best interests–if they couldn’t handle high school, how on earth can they expect to handle college?  The article goes into some detail discussing that issue (it seems to be a mixed bag overall).  But there’s another facet to this issue that is worth addressing.  The Gates Foundation’s recent study found that boredom was a big factor in some students’ decision to drop out (p. iii):

Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting.  These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested in school.  These were among the top reasons selected by those with high GPAs and by those who said they were motivated to work hard.

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), and 70 percent were confident they could have graduated if they had tried. Even a majority of those with low GPAs thought they could have graduated.

To be accurate, there are no single answers as to why students drop out.  For these students, terminal boredom probably wasn’t the only reason, or even the biggest reason.  But if a student is fed up and wants out of high school, what’s wrong with him/her moving on to junior college?  We let students graduate from high school early.  So is it necessarily a bad thing if a student is commits to college in lieu of a high school diploma?  We get an unmotivated student out of the classroom, freeing up some tax dollars and classroom space, and make it at least a little more likely that the student, now paying tuition, will take a little more ownership in his/her education. 

It’s also worth pointing out that setting the age of adulthood at 18 is a relatively recent development.  As early as the late 1800s, a 16-year-old was considered an adult, with all the corresponding rights and responsibilities.  In that light, maybe it’s not entirely surprising that so many juniors seem to come down with senioritis.