This question is specific only to North America. I graduated from high school in 1998. During my schooling, there was a lot in the media about “staying in school”, which was taken to mean that one should at least finish high school. High school dropouts were seen as those most readily destined for unqualified, minimum-wage “ditch digger” or “McJobs”. In practice, though, the vast majority of people seem to end up either going to college or pursuing an apprenticeship after high school and still have difficulty finding a good first “real” job without experience, and I would imagine that that’s even truer today. I’ve been wondering, in real life, what might be examples of actual jobs that you can get when just having graduated from high school that you wouldn’t get if you had dropped out, without getting additional training on your own beforehand? (Include in this definition jobs where you will be given on-the-job training OR the employer will be willing to provide training prior to commencing employment OR the job is entry-level but with good potential for advancement).
I will mention one hypothetical example and what I know of how it works in practice, which makes for an interesting analysis: police work. In Ontario, a police officer formally needs to have a grade-12 education, I.E. to have completed high school. Of course you have to finish some 24 weeks of police academy before you’re hired, but as I said above, that is employer-provided training that leads directly to a position. Generally, there is no official requirement for the applicant to have any college education. That said, being accepted to police academy is difficult as a great number of people want the job and they are looking for candidates who meet a variety of criteria. In hopes of improving their chances, many applicants first take a police foundations or criminology course at a college or university. I have a friend back home who is a retired police sergeant and who teaches a police foundations course at a community college (his former department and his college will remain anonymous). He has often complained that a large number of the students he gets are lazy and has even stated that he has been told by someone at his former department that they won’t be taking graduates of his college. He has further stated that, rather than graduates of a police foundations course, they would, for example, rather take someone who has spent some time working at McDonalds, in hopes that such a person has developed a work ethic and learned to deal with difficult people. I stress that this is just hearsay that I have received from one person at one department, but it’s an interesting example.
My first thought is military. It is possible to get in with a GED, but that isn’t universally true at all times. It depends on the recruitment needs at the time, for the Army, and I’m not certain that the Air Force or Marines will accept a GED at all or not. I think the Navy accepts GED candidates, similar to the Army, dependant on recruitment needs.
It’s not just about what certificate you have. Generally speaking, you’d expect someone who had 4 years of high school to be more capable than someone who spent those 4 years working (or doing nothing). Now, the difference between someone with 2.5 years of high school and 4 years won’t be much, but the general principal holds.
The very first place I worked after graduating from high school actually required me to bring my physical diploma in to prove that I had graduated from high school. This was for computer assembly and software imaging work at the IT department a hospital, and required a tie and jacket for no real good reason given some of the physical requirements of the job. I suspect that hospital in general had a policy of not hiring people without high school diplomas, whether as janitors or whatever, just in order to avoid the lowest of low achievers. Similarly, a job I got at a cell phone refurbish shop required that you have at least one year of post-high school education complete (though I think many were at trade schools), but this was simply a filter to remove all people who didn’t have aspirations beyond high school from being considered.
Don’t forget that a high school diploma is a signal that you have the dharacteristics to finish a basic qualification. It’s not necessarily about any skills or knowledge you might have. The same is true for many university degrees.
Demanding a high school diploma is just one way of saying, “Don’t waste HR’s time with people who dropped out, because they are unlikely to make good employees anyway, and I’m not taking the risk.” And it’s no doubt true that the cohort of people who dropped out of school are likely to be either less intelligent, or less conscientious, Or came from difficult backgrounds and may be damaged in some way.
That’s undortunate for those people who are none of those things.
Those jobs may require only a high school diploma, but what’s the real outlook on getting hired there with just that when you might be competing for the jobs with people who got more education?
I don’t know how it is now, but when I worked at a Taco Bell in the early to mid 1990s Corporate decreed (we were a corporate store) that managers had to have diplomas, though they did grandfather in those who currently were management who did not. I can’t remember if they accepted GEDs or not.
I really don’t know why everyone always thinks fast food is a good fit for dropouts. At least as far as Taco Bell is concerned it really wasn’t; we hired quite a few over the years. They’d get frustrated by the constant fast pace, the amount of reading they had to do - reading the screens, taking orders, reading directions for making Pico, etc.- and quit fairly soon.
A couple years ago, trying to help a neighborhood kid without a HS diploma – seemed like there were dang few jobs that would even consider him!
McDonalds & Wal-Mart both required HS diploma or GED to even apply. Temp summer jobs in the Park system (mowing grass, raking leaves, picking up dead fish from the beach) required that. Summer low-skill jobs on highway construction crews (standing in the road holding the stop/go slow sign) required that. Unloading trucks at the UPS terminal required one. Etc.
I think it’s like Sam_Stone said, hiring departments use lack of a HS diploma as a quick way of weeding out form the many applicants those they think may not make the best employees.
There is truth to this. I did some interviewing and hiring for one company who had the policy of not hiring anyone with “some college” classes but no degree on their resume. The head of HR said these people are not wired to complete tasks and that would translate into their work ethic.
I have never had to prove I had a high school diploma after I got into university, and I only used it to get into university. (They never saw the diploma, they just wanted a transcript, which admittedly is proof that I was passing high school.)
If someone wants a copy of my university degree I can email them a copy, which I keep on my home computer. However I probably could only prove I graduated from high school by physically showing up at my old high school. Apparently I wouldn’t need ID because graduation is public.
I’m sure I’ve met people who didn’t graduate from high school at work. I only know one person who told me that though. The boss didn’t know and she could speak Spanish, a valuable skill for the work I was doing at the time.
Day laborers generally don’t need to have completed any level of education. These are jobs where someone needs some basic work done for a short period of time. It’s typically a lot of physical grunt work like picking up garbage, moving stuff around, digging trenches, etc. More advanced tasks may also be done like painting, home building, etc. A motivated day laborer could possibly get a full-time job by doing really good and reliable work that gets noticed by the boss of the worksite.
Many of the home building jobs also don’t need a HS degree. They care more about the quality of work that you do rather than any level of education you have. A HS dropout could get a job as a grunt and learn along the way.
I saw a random advertisement from one of the IBEW locals here recently–that’s the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, they were advertising for people who were interested in apprenticeships, to even begin the process they required a High School degree with transcript–because they wanted proof you had completed Algebra II. Which was a specific requirement I haven’t seen from a job before.
A friend who is now a tenured professor at a state university (with a PhD, I believe two masters degrees and a BS) never actually graduated high school, because he found out at the very end that he was missing a PE requirement.
That makes sense. Students apply to university before they graduate from high school (unless they’re taking a gap year or something).
While the internet was a “thing” when I graduated from high school, I’m pretty sure there was no way for the university to electronically check with my school whether I had actually graduated or not. I wonder if that has changed.
It makes sense. Electricians do a lot of algebra. Kirchhoff’s laws, Ohm’s law, current loop calculations, understanding 3-phase power and working with it, etc.
College acceptance is conditional on actually graduating high school. Even before the internet or services like Parchment it wasn’t hard for colleges to require final high school transcripts be sent to them by the end of summer.
It seems to me there was a line in my acceptance letter from UW-LaCrosse stating something along the line of if you don’t graduate they rescind your acceptance.