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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
I think you nailed this issue although I will say that I think dropping out today may signal an level of fundamental life incompetence or unwillingness to get along with life that it didn't signal in the past. (Of course I don't mean everyone. We can all think of someone who dropped out because of life circumstances way beyond his or her control.)
What are you getting your master's in if you don't mind me asking?
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Counseling - Marriage and Family focused. Best way to practice in the field at the master's level.
While it is true to some extent that there's an anti-social aspect to dropping out today, I don't associate it with incompetence at all. Thinking of my clients, they were all capable, just a mix between unwilling and life situations - pregnancy or trying to take care of their family because of absent or incapable parents (sometimes legally sometimes not.) The only ones who might be considered 'incapable' would be the special education clients, and ironically they all graduated because as one put it "special ed is easy." They're just utterly unprepared to do anything other than get SSI or work in a workshop (the programs that don't take you when you're an addict, so not terribly helpful.)
I think the lack of jobs available for your average 16-18 year old drop out - the inability to say fine you're dropping out and you're going to work at X factory or in Y trade and be able to make a living, even a small one or a supplemental one to the family's is a major cause and/or perpetuation of poverty and often crime. NPR just did a story talking to a man who has no diploma or GED but has worked for decades, always able to get another job and is very highly skilled at this point. But then while hunting for a new job in the past several years couldn't find one as the GED/diploma question was an automatic decline of the application. Some people just aren't going to be able to do trig, or diagram a sentence, and there's not really anything wrong with that, it's always been the case.
If it's only about the piece of paper and not about the job skills then it's become a problem. Similarly to how the college degrees have progressed from "You must have your BA" to "You must have your MA/PhD." Status, class, money, all this stuff is intertwined into a major supply/demand issue.
/tl;dr it's complicated and not just as simple as one or the other.