Back to School Night

Went to the oldest daughter’s Back to School night. It’s her senior year in high school, and its slightly less important than her junior year. It went just fine, in case you were wondering. Her teachers all seem to care about the kids and their respective subjects. She’ll be heavily challenged in some of her classes and less so in others (Student Council leadership seminar, for instance), but that’s not what I took keyboard in hand to tell you about.

Did you know….and I have it on good authority, the High School principal….that the difference in lifetime earnings between high school dropouts and high school graduates is $250,000?  That’s right! A drop out can expect to earn a quarter-million bucks less than the high school graduate over the course of a lifetime.

I realize, this runs the serious risk of putting me at odds with parents from less affluent areas, but that ain’t much. Let’s face it, the difference in lifetime earning power between a high school grad and a Bachelor’s degree recipient has to be much, much larger.

What it really says though, is that just having a high school diploma doesn’t really prepare you to earn much in today’s world. I’m told it used to, but sure don’t anymore. I’m not so sure that’s necessarily a good thing to say about modern society.