No More Driving While Uneducated

In a recent report for WPRI (“Moving the Milwaukee Economy Forward”), George Lightbourn and Sammis White noted that Milwaukee’s economic future depends in part on increasing the percentage of high school graduates in the local labor pool. A high school diploma doesn’t open nearly as many doors as a college degree or specialized training, but it has become an entry-level requirement for many jobs. More workers with diplomas means better job prospects for them and greater growth opportunities for employers. This is true not just in Milwaukee, but throughout Wisconsin.

The question is, how can we persuade more Wisconsin youngsters to finish high school? Lightbourn and White acknowledge that “the answer to that question has proven to be very elusive.”

I don’t claim to have the answer myself, but I am going to suggest an answer: deny a driver’s license to anyone who does not have a high school diploma. After, say, a two-year phase-in period, anyone over 18 years of age who did not have a diploma would no longer qualify to receive a driver’s license. Anyone 18 years or younger who was not on a path to receive a diploma also would not qualify for a driver’s license.

This status could be reversible. A 20-year-old, for example, who returned to school and earned a diploma (or equivalent) could apply for and receive a license, as could a 16-year-old who dropped out of school temporarily but then got back on the path toward graduation. If there was no diploma in your future, though, there would be no driver’s license, either.

Denying a driver’s license to those without a diploma isn’t just a gratuitous punishment. It is, instead, a way of making the undereducated feel the consequences of their choices. Being unable to drive can have adverse consequences for one’s personal convenience, social status, relationships, job opportunities, and overall freedom of movement. The same consequences are associated with not having a high school diploma. It is far better that Wisconsin youth start learning that lesson at 16—when there is still ample time to right the ship—than at 18, when they attempt to make it in the world with only an eighth-grade education.

Critics of this proposal will naturally ask, “If we do what you suggest, won’t we just be consigning high school dropouts to an even worse fate than they face now?” Almost certainly. In fact, that is the idea. What one hopes, though, is that we will have far fewer dropouts in the first place—that the highly undesirable consequences of dropping out will serve as a powerful incentive to complete high school.

To insist on those consequences is called having the courage of your convictions. It’s something any healthy society must do.

-June 23, 2008