What I've been always interested in is why people leave school at given intervals, statistically speaking. If, for argument's sake, 90% of high school dropouts

What I've been always interested in is why people leave school at given intervals, statistically speaking. If, for argument's sake, 90% of high school dropouts are dropouts because they were too lazy to go to school, it stands to reason that they will also do poorly in the workplace, being too lazy to go to work. That doesn't mean the remaining 10% who had to drop out due to unfortunate life circumstances will also have trouble finding and maintaing quality work the same way. Because of that, it is really not clear what role education plays. Does the education and degree count for something, or does increasing levels of education just increasingly filter out those who lack the qualities that are appealing in the workplace, placing a bias towards those who have more education with respect to such interpretations? The answer to that makes a huge difference in determining if education pays or not.