The Cost of Dropouts to Society?
NPR ran a story (today?) entitled “Helping Dropouts Break the Cycle of Poverty.” It’s an enlightening glimpse at the lifetime earning potential for those who don’t finish high school compared with those who do. It’s quite scary, actually, to consider just what an expensive world we have created. Here are some of the numbers:
By the Numbers:
- 75 percent of state prison inmates and 59 percent of federal inmates are high-school dropouts.
- High-school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than graduates to be incarcerated.
- Dropouts contribute disproportionately to the unemployment rate. In 2001, 55 percent of young adult dropouts were employed, compared to 74 percent of high-school graduates and 87 percent of college graduates.
- Dropouts contribute to state and federal tax coffers at about one-half the rate of high-school graduates. Over a working lifetime, a dropout will contribute about $60,000 less.
- The 23 million high-school dropouts aged 18-67 will contribute roughly $50 billion less annually in state and federal taxes.
- Studies suggest the United States would save $41.8 billion in health care costs if the 600,000 young people who dropped out in 2004 were to complete one additional year of education.
- If 33 percent of dropouts graduated from high school, the federal government would save $10.8 billion each year in food stamps, housing assistance, and temporary assistance for needy families.
- Testifying before Congress, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said dropouts cost the United States “more than $260 billion… in lost wages, lost taxes and lost productivity over their lifetimes.”
Equally revealing in the statistics is the perspective of how much under-educated citizens actually cost the government. This thought has crossed my mind before, in particular when I was reading about remnants of hunter-gatherer tribes in Kenya during the British imperial age. It was pretty clear at that time that the British government gained much more collectively from making the tribes literate and integrating them into the economic system (at the lowest levels, of course). Most dropouts in America today would never survive as hunter-gatherers, so, of course, education is essential to moving people out of poverty. Let’s not forget, however, how much our government depends on higher wage-earners.
What is interesting about that fact is how high the barrier of entry is for children of underpriveleged homes. Even State universities are upgrading their admissions requirements, making it harder than ever for many students to even get a shot at a good education.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Wow this is a really good post.
p
March 30th, 2006 at 10:31 am
This is a thoughtful post.
But the cynical part of me thinks what can be done about it? Do we make graduation requirements easier? Forget about graduation and just make high school a holding tank for teenagers? Make truancy laws tougher, thereby incarcerating those not in school for…not being in school? Make trade high schools much more prominent features of American education thereby “tracking” certain students into the mechanical, marketing, home ec., etc. worlds where they can do something they like and makes them “useful” to society but keeps them from introduced to literature, science, art, or any other “unuseful” aspect of “classical” education? Allow kids to be in school simply to play sports, just so they stay off the streets?
There’s also the problem that I consider the most fundamental–education doesn’t really solve the employment problem. Educated people that cannot find occupations meeting their interests or skills can either (a) choose to work at something below their skills or not aligned with their interests, (b) lead disaffected lives hopping from job to job, constantly unable to find something that “fits”, (c) choose not to work in the hopes that they can do something else with their lives other than run the rat race, (d) kill themselves, (e) attempt to enter academia thereby delaying entry into the aforementioned rat race for a few years, (f) start their own business (assuming there’s a market for their talents, etc., (g) run for political office, (h) travel to another country where the welfare system is more generous or the demands of “basic” living are less costly, (i) become a full time church employee/missionary, (j) any combination of a through i.
i’m trying to be somewhat humorous here (unsuccessfully, perhaps), but my point is that NPR’s story was too limited in scope. if they were doing something bigger than a news story reporting facts and figures they might have asked: what is the point of education in this country right now? is the public educational system set up so that “no child [gets] left behind” or is it essentially a holding tank for a consumeristic society’s children until they become “productive members of society”–meaning they can earn wages and buy products independently of their parents/family units? (and if it’s the latter, what the hell can we actually do short of armed revolution?)
April 1st, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Also there were a bunch of statistics let out that explained a lot of the black plight in all this. I could say a lot more on this subject but I am not. Maybe it will be a post one day.
p
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
My parents are public school teachers in one of the poorest and worst performing school districts in California, both nearing retirement now. Growing up, what I heard them say consistently every year was that the parents’ lack of interest and/or support in their children’s education was the biggest obstacle they encountered to successfully educating students in the classroom. This was a bigger problem than working within an unresponsive bureaucracy, dealing with the politics of the Teachers Union or any other of the challenges teachers face.
e: you ask “what is the point of education in this country right now?” My guess is your parents, like mine, instilled in you the importance of education, for some reason or another. Unfortunately, many students who grow up in poverty and attend the type of schools that my parents teach at are not taught the importance of education at home. There are many reasons for this, such as: the parents hold multiple jobs and cannot participate in their child’s education; the parents are on drugs and don’t care about education; the parents don’t think a college degree or even a high school diploma is worthwhile or attainable. These are just examples and not always the case, but naturally more prevalent in poor areas than wealthy areas.
The point being, in response to your question “what can be done about it”, a student whose parents invest in his/her education (not necessarily money, but time and encouragement, etc) is far more likely to not dropout than a student whose parents don’t show support for his/her education.
There’s no easy answer to that problem, though. You can’t really legislate parents into accountability for their children’s education.
These aren’t answers, just observations that I thought would be helpful to this conversation.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:45 pm
terrence: yeah, good response. i guess my real question is just that–if the goal of education is to make one smarter or able to get out of the ghetto or some other social cause (justified or not), i can see continuing to throw money and new ideas at public schools like the one i went to (rather than just the suburban schools).
if the goal of education is to make one into a productive member of society so that one can pay takes and buy things then i’m not so sure that our schools are oriented correctly–there’s too much “enriching” knowledge like art and music and english and thinking. there should be more home ec and wood shop and mathematics for consumers–useful stuff like that.
but it seems like “no child left behind” etc., is really there to create a minimally-funded holding tank for “unproductive” or “bad” or “minority” populations so that the “productive” “educated” “good” ranks of society can go to private schools with a clear conscience. After all, the “winners” might think, we worked to get to the better schools and should reap the benefits of our work, parents’ interest and prosperity, etc.
i’m just wondering if the problem isn’t much, much deeper than statistics and money. something more like the problem with capitalist society in general. something deeply engrained in how Americans approach the world and education in general.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Thanks, Erik. That’s exactly what I was getting at.
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Erik,
I agree, the “no child left behind” act or any other federal government education program as far as I’m concerned has little to do with education and much to do with special interests, politics and money.
With regards to flaws in education here, maybe it’s not so much a problem with America’s approach to education, but inefficiencies and inconsistencies generated by poverty, bureaucracy and political graft.
Or, mabye you’re right, maybe it’s much deeper than that. The important thing is, it takes people on both sides of the political spectrum to keep the people in charge accountable.