[greymule]

They look for that piece of paper and think one thing, "possibly trainable".

One employer told me that a high school diploma is a guarantee of nothing more than that the applicant didn't get kicked out of school. He also told me that his company does test applicants, and that some people with only a high school diploma are way ahead, in knowledge and skills, of others with college degrees. Interestingly, his company does place value on the General Educational Development (GED) diploma, since it is an indication that the applicant is motivated and didn't receive a diploma simply automatically.

A high school diploma—even a junior high education—used to mean something, though.

With his eighth-grade diploma, my grandfather (b. 1889) was able to get a job as an accountant at Ford Motor Company, where he eventually became an executive.

When in 1970 I began my short career as an English teacher, our high school had perhaps the last remaining "old-time" teacher in the state. She was 65 and in her 48th year of teaching. (She was graduated in June 1923 and, with her high school diploma, started teaching at that same school in the fall. It was a small town. She taught three generations of some families.) I wish my kids could have been taught by her instead of by the ones with their master's degrees in educational mumbo jumbo.