No education is pointless. Be a sponge and absorb, as much as you can, no one can take the knowledge away from you. The things I learned on the farm plus college carried me thru life. If you do not feel challenged take advanced classes or trade school classes at night. I took welding, heating and AC classes at night to expand my knowledge. Never stop learning.

On average college BAC degree holder earns 84% more than a HS degree holder over a lifetime. There are outlying data points anywhere you look. I would say the most important factor in this topic is make sure your kid gets a degree that matters.

I think today you're probably right. I think it had most to do with home life, more than anything. High school bored me to death. They'd give you a little novel to read and tell you to read 5 pages of it that night. They'd spread a book out over a month. I'd read the book the same day and then have a month to read other books, lol. I ended up dropping out in 10th grade. In NY at the time, they made you wait one calendar year after dropping out before you could take a GED (stupidest law ever), so I worked for a year then took my GED. I took 6-7 classes a semester at a junior college, so that I was able to get my associates in 1.5 years instead of 2, and made the Dean's list 2 of those 3 semesters. When my high school class started college, I was on my last semester there. Had it not been for waiting a year, I'd have been long gone. I was also working 3 jobs when I was doing that. University was more interesting than the junior college was. So, I wish I could have started college even younger than I did (I was 17). But, I agree that a lot of kids today can't even manage to hold down a McDonald's job at 17.

Schools have been mandated to take on many issues along with the educational component and the material or knowledge today is many fold what it was even 1-2 generations ago. Schools may not be doing as good a job as they could in determining what knowledge to teach and what not to teach as the school year and hours have not changed in almost 3 generations. Also today with higher education as an emphasis the success spread or gap is much larger than it was decades ago. We also have grade inflation and parents pressuring to keep their children in the same social groups while they go through school. I don't understand why so many are so against becoming educated and increasing ones awareness of how to learn and how to make choices. You can not even become an officer in the US military today without a 4-year college equivalent degree yet many state why bother?

The business sector better understands the current grade inflation system and thus hire master's degree persons as they have demonstrated more desire to learn and focus.
When I taught at our tech college we had many trade school students and apprenticeship students. Many had good skills but did not pay attention in HS and could not pass routine math, language etc., Lot of remedial course work was needed.

Bryce

You don’t need a degree to make money or get rich. You do,however, need one to do certain jobs. It just depends on what you want to do with your life. You should take what you can from school or any experience in life. The only bad thing is not learning from your experiences and getting forced to do work you don’t like for a living.

IMO, learning to read (and comprehend what you read) is the most important thing a person can learn. It's the key to everything else

Yes pretty hard to use a CAD machine if you can't read, pretty difficult to order supplies for plumbing, carpentry, or electrical work if you can't read, wow that brings up a new opportunity, maybe, making Icons usable in the trades so work can get done.

Bryce