Why Get a Diploma?

Fast Facts

• One in three high school students will fail to graduate with their class.
• Every 29 seconds, a student gives up on school.

The Impact

• On average, high school graduates earn $175 more per week than dropouts.
• A dropout will earn $300,000 less than a high school graduate over a lifetime of full-time employment. And they'll make $1 million less than a college graduate.
• High school dropouts are four times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed.
• Dropouts are also much more likely to be living in poverty, receiving public assistance, in prison, on death row, unhealthy, divorced and single parents with children.
• Dropouts are also less likely to vote or participate in the community, and represent only three percent of actively engaged citizens in the U.S. today.

Cause for Hope

• If they could do it all over again, 74 percent of dropouts would have stayed in school. Students drop out for a variety of reasons, but they agree on one thing — dropping out was a mistake.
• In fact, a poll released by MTV and the National Governors Association in 2005 found that 87 percent of all young people want to go onto college.