I disagree. Even if every American had a college degree, there will always be a lower class. There will always be unemployment, there will always be fast food burger flippers, janitors, Wal-Mart helpers etc. High School dropouts don’t cost the economy anything, they fill the above roles.
If the student is just wasting space in a classroom, they’re wasting taxpayer dollars as well. Personally I think the K thru 12 model is an outdated failure.
I dropped out in my junior year, took my GED a few months later and “graduated” nearly a full year before my classmates. I was already running a department in a local factory and hired a couple of my classmates when they graduated.