GED May Give Hawaii Dropouts False Hope
High school dropouts are told that getting a GED is a way to earn more money in a tough economy. But recent economic studies show the GED provides few income advantages.
Roughly 2,000 Hawaii residents took the $75 GED Test in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. Around 1,415 passed and received their GED credentials, according to Hawaii GED Administrator Annette Young-Ogata.
The GED, or General Education Development credential, is earned by passing a battery of five assessments and is considered by many to be equivalent to a graduation diploma for adults who did not complete high school.
After the program’s inception in 1943 it was a popular belief that the GED would offer significant wage advantages over a lifetime to people who otherwise would be considered high school dropouts. But recent data shows the average GED recipient earns less income than the average high school graduate and, as best researchers can tell, about the same as high school dropouts.
“After accounting for years of school and cognitive skills, the wage and annual earnings advantages of GED holders over uncredentialed dropouts become smaller and often statistically insignificant,” reported the national GED Testing Service in 2009.
More than nationwide completed the battery of five tests in 2008 — up nearly 7 percent from the year before. Of those, approximately 493,000 completed and passed.
It is not uncommon for GED Test participation to grow during an economic recession like the recent one, states a 2009 press release from the GED Testing Center.
Despite that, Hawaii’s participation rate has remained steady. Approximately 41 percent of Hawaii’s 868,000 residents over the age of 25 have attained either a high school diploma, equivalency credential or less, according to . The GED is one of for Hawaii adults to earn a diploma.
The administrator is not required to keep data about GED recipients’ income and jobs, Young-Ogata said. But by Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman and another study cited in a indicate the credential does not accomplish its goal of putting GED recipients on equal footing with those who completed a formal high school education.
Heckman’s study shows that many adults who receive a GED credential fail to go on to college. The few who do go only to two-year colleges and end up dropping out in the first semester, in a recent commentary about the study. In the end, they earn roughly comparable salaries to those of high school dropouts.
Even from 2008 shows that although GED-credentialed adults make more on average than their high school dropout counterparts, they still don’t earn as much income as those with high school diplomas.
conducted by the state of Utah Workforce shows how those national trends apply to one locality.
“GED credential holders tend to have lower wages, earnings, and probability of employment than high school graduates,” the study found.
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