[Retrofitted]

Trade/technical schools often require a high school diploma or a GED for entrance, unless you consider those schools to not be further education. Then, with the training from those schools, you enter the job market. Not seeing this as a screwy at all, really.

[ConservativeInPA]

There's nothing wrong with trade schools. Graduate high school, then go to trade school. Personally, I think there are some academic basics that people should require for themselves regardless of post-secondary education choices. There is significant illiteracy in mathematics and sciences in this country. I don't expect everyone to go on to be a mathematician, but the basics (up to trigonometry) help in nearly all trades. The GED does not test for those things. It is incredibly easy.

My assessment of the GED is quite simple: it is aiming low, really low. People should be aiming higher than what is taught in high school, not less. Most high school teachers are ignoramuses that they are barely educated. They mostly have degrees in teaching, which is worthless. (I'm not picking on all teachers by the way, it's the 99% that give the 1% a bad reputation.) So whether you go to high school or home school or do distance learning, the name of the game is doing more than what they expect in government schools. This by the way is not time consuming if done right. Half the crap that they do in government schools is busy work. Cut the busy work and focus on real learning (that most certainly does not appear on the GED).