EDITORIAL – High-school diploma? Pshaw!

High school sucked, right? Well, it seems you didn’t really have to go anyway.

Four… High school sucked, right? Well, it seems you didn’t really have to go anyway.

Four hundred thousand current U.S. college students never graduated from high school, The New York Times reported yesterday.

One such student, 23-year-old April Pointer, failed a science class senior year and never finished high school, according to The Times. But Rockland Community College, part of the State University of New York, accepted her anyway, even though she didn’t take the General Educational Development test.

Pointer’s reasoning for skipping out on a high-school equivalency degree? She heard the G.E.D. test would be hard.

Hmm, wonder how that attitude holds up during midterms and finals in college.

Still, one could argue that Pointer, and others like her, have changed their ways since high school, and are now more determined to do well in school. And if so, it’s great that they get a second chance.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons students don’t finish high school. Kids get sick, family emergencies take precedence, tough situations prompt young people to leave school in favor of work. So it’s a good thing that the system allows people a fair shot at an education later.

However, that’s just the reasoning behind the G.E.D., which offers not only the chance to gain the equivalent of a high-school diploma in order to attend college, but also a level of preparation for further education.

The fact is, students who start college without any sort of high-school equivalency just aren’t as prepared as other students. So people like Pointer are setting themselves up for more difficulty when they get there. And it’s difficulty that Pointer claims to have been avoiding by foregoing the G.E.D in the first place.

College graduation rates show that high school dropouts tend to be college dropouts as well. The Times reported that just 37 percent of college students without high school diplomas returned after their first year, compared to 57 percent of the entire class.

But why should we care — that’s their problem, right? Well, maybe not. Another side of the issue is whether or not state funding should go toward financial aid for these students. If it does, that’s less money available to the students with diplomas, who — statistically speaking at least — are more likely to succeed.

The New York state budget office told The New York Times that it offered an estimated $29 million in financial aid for 13,000 students without high school diplomas.

Many of these students probably wouldn’t be able to attend college without that aid. After all, poor economic conditions don’t usually bring about an environment that helps kids make it through high school.

On one hand, it’s nice that states want to help individuals overcome difficulties and pursue higher education, which is increasingly important when it comes to finding jobs. On the other, just throwing money at the problem may not be the solution.

Especially when you consider how some colleges have responded. Seeing great opportunity for profit, commercial colleges popped up all over the place in the ’80s and ’90s, accepting high-school dropouts left and right for the sake of collecting their financial aid, The Times reported. When these unprepared students dropped out of college and failed to pay back their government-subsidized student loans, it was the government’s problem, not the for-profit “educational” institutions’.

In response, the federal government now requires students without high-school