1/3 of U.S. High School Students drop out

I was listening to Bill Gates talk in an interview on cnn today(sunday) and saying that the economic problems we are facing are nothing compared with the disaster of 1/3 of U.S. High school students dropping out before graduation. He said that in less developed countries lesser education is less of a problem than here because there are still so many menial jobs. However, more and more as menial jobs are replaced by technology like robots, there will only be less and less menial jobs here in the U.S. So this will mean there will be less and less unskilled jobs that exist in the U.S. as time goes on.

He gave the example of when there was a farm revolution at the turn of the 20th century when gas and diesel powered tractors replaced (for the most part) men walking behind horse drawn plows. Many people who had no other skills were horrified at this at the time. However, now the U.S. feeds both itself and much of the world using tractors and only 2% of its population actually being farmers as a result.

Gates said that in the long run innovation and research and development and importing really highly educated and resourceful people from other countries is what will make this country stronger and stronger.

He was asked in regard to education if any nation on earth does it better. He said that even though very small countries do it better with their education, no large nation does as well as the United States. He said on any scale the top 12 to 19 Universities on Earth are in the United States.

So, being a melting pot we do education for a large country better than anyone, even though there are extreme problems in many inner city areas in the U.S. because of High School Drop outs.

Despite these problems, the top 20% of best educated people in the United States are better educated than in any large country (200 million people or more) on earth.