As for the high drop out rate of 1st year apprentices, I blame our Education system.
Ain't that the truth. A good friend of mine is an experienced high school teacher (11/12) and dispairs of many of the kids she teaches. We were talking about a particularly troublesome group of kids with 'behavioural issues' that she was sub teaching, and she believes that a big part of the 'behavioural' epidemic is that many kids who act up are simply not interested in the 11/12 syllabus (needless to say, the 'behavioural issues' ceased about twelve minutes after she took the class on and no wonder. She scares the crap out of me and we're friends 
, but modern teaching standards are another rant for another time
).
Her theory is that a lot of kids shouldn't be doing Senior as they have no interest in and no aptitude for that level of book learning, but should be out learning how to do the practical things they enjoy and are good at, rather than wasting her time and their own. Your theory sheds a different light on the same problem, because it appears that many students are wasting valuable time struggling through B-grade literary criticism when they could be learning how to fix stuff and then become more useful apprentices. Basically nobody wins, least of all the kids. Of course the education system isn't producing kids fit for tertiary study either and the unis are having to pick up the slack in first year courses, but that's yet another rant.
As for the wannabe AMEs, maybe they're reading the stuff in DG Reporting Points and thinking twice. 