Elizabeth Pedigo, 21, of Toledo, Ohio, graduated high school in 2008 but has struggled at college.

Elizabeth Pedigo, 21, has dropped out of community college and is not working.

 

Do You Like this Article? Then Like Us on Facebook.

 

Right now she's taking a year off from her two-year general studies program at Owens Community College.

"I wasn't very good at being at college," she said. "I just couldn't finish the assignments."

Now living with her parents, Pedigo plans to seek out work at a nearby Kroger's or McDonald's.

Pedigo is one of many recent high school graduates who have been left behind. Three out of four recent high school graduates not attending college full-time do not have a full-time job, according to a study released on Wednesday by Carl Van Horn, Cliff Zukin and Mark Szeltner at Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Many of these recent high school graduates are too unprepared to finish college or work at a job that offers professional advancement, Van Horn said.

Among recent high school graduates not in college, 30 percent are jobless and actively looking for work, according to the Rutgers report; another 14 percent are jobless but not looking for work.

In contrast, an Economic Policy Institute report showed in 2007 an unemployment rate of just 17.5 percent among recent high school graduates not attending college.

Today's new college graduates are snatching the low-end jobs in retail, restaurants, sales and offices that used to be the domain of recent high school graduates, Van Horn said.

Recent high school graduates "don't have a trade, and they don't have any advanced technical skills, so they've got no upward mobility," Van Horn said. "They're going to struggle to form families, to have housing, to be financially independent from their parents, to essentially achieve a family-sustainable income, unless they can get some form of post-secondary education."

Source: Huffington Post | Bonnie Kavoussi

bonnie.kavoussi@huffingtonpost.com