High School Diploma

This is a cool topic, and I'd be pleased to debate it. Assuming just accepting the open debate was fine, i'll proceed to argue why I believe education of the level equivalent to high school (colleges in my perspective; UK) is important. Firstly, whilst your example does hold some water (many technical jobs such as plumbers do make fair amounts of cash from the go) what it looks at is a situation where there aren't any white collar jobs, but the assumption there would be more blue collar jobs. In my experience, and as far as I can tell statistic wise, the opposite is true. Blue-collar jobs typically related to specific roles (ie Electrician, Mechanic, Plumber) which are fewer in number than the majority of white-collar jobs that share required skillsets. For example there are less plumber jobs than there are office work within: ICT, Admin, Marketing for example. This comparison works, because typically the high school graduate with skills and quals related to one of those jobs will have skills that allow them to look at positions in the others too, as they are interdisciplinary (and business courses, marketing and IT all share similar tenants). A plumber, however, requires specifically a plumber. Now whilst handymen can do "a bit of everything", the kind of high quality plumbing work that commands the salary you speak of requires quite intimate knowledge of plumbing, which is not generally something someone who does "this and that" will accrue, unless they have focused exclusively on plumbing. So in truth, competition for blue collar work above the cash-in-hand handyman level is actually harsher than white collar, because the plumbers are locked into doing plumbing only, which means they all compete for the same jobs. White collar kids can look at a wider variety of jobs. Also, maintenance work that is typically blue collar is more prone to being replaced by machinery/robotics. A lot of white collar work involves a personnel elements which means that these jobs (currently) require a human component by and large. This is another reason blue collar work at the technical level is steeped in competition; because jobs have a tendency to vanish under more efficient systems. Car manufacturing, mining, steelworking in this country (UK) all technical blue collar jobs are all but non-existent thanks to machinery which is now operated by white-collar types. In this way it makes sense to prepare kids for roles that will persist, rather than jobs that are at risk of being phased out within the next decade or so. You also need to reconsider if you let kids drop out of high school to pursue the blue collar work you speak of, you are actually creating higher competition for those very jobs, so you will damage the situation those workers are in. Whilst the demand to be employed in these roles will soar thanks to the unqualified kids, the demand for the service will not reflect that. Also; how many mechanics or plumbers does a town actually need? In contrast to your raised point, when you actually lower the amount of kids going to college you will increase the price of their education in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. So whilst this may reduce the collective debt somewhat, it places individuals in a pricier situation. This in itself due to increased rarity increases the value of their qualifications, making their education even more superior to those without qualifications as the perception is that "not many people have this qualification, that means this individual is valuable!" My own arguments: Education to this level is important as human society is moving beyond a labouring society and manual skills, whilst useful, will eventually be superseded by technologies that require only the input of skilled technicians. This is not sci-fi speculation, it has happened across several previously reliable manual sectors. If a job does not require thinking, only problem solving, then it can be addressed by a machine. This makes manual working jobs at risk of being replaced. If you let children leave high school without the skills required to interact in a society that has less and less use for manual labour, you are disadvantaging them. Whilst this system is far from perfect (graduates do face competition for jobs) it is preferable making high school a choice-only thing. Only in a society that aspires to keep low-skilled jobs and thus maintain a status-quo of production (unlikely) is such an approach best. What should be the case is our education system perhaps made more flexible in what is taught, but making it an option is not ideal because this creates too much hardship for those who opt out, as they all fight each other for the same, gradually decreasing pool of jobs.