One Quarter Of Self-Made Billionaires Are College Dropouts

snowcrash said:
Let's see...25% chance to become billionaires by dropping out of college or 75% chance by completing college. I'll take getting a college degree, Alex.
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You really should go with that college degree, because if you think that 1 in 4 billionaires were college dropouts means there is a 25% chance to become a billionaire then you need a class in statistics ;)
 
EchtoGammut said:
It should also be noted that almost all of those "dropouts" came from wealthy backgrounds and had better than average primary school educations. As someone who is self-made, but suffered a lot of failures, I have been very curious about those who succeeded, especially those who succeeded early. One common thread, was they had a fall-back safety net. While their book stories often paint them as garage successes, most could fall back on their parents. This allowed them to commit everything to their projects and not hold back. By contrast most people that have failed were more hesitant about such commitments because complete failure would result in being homeless and they couldn't get loans from their parents to cover startup costs. There are a few exceptions, but generally the rule in early entrepreneurial success seems to be have upper-middle or wealthy parents.
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This is probably the most important part. I get frustrated with everyone mentioning rags to riches stories when in reality it's riches to mega riches stories.

While they did start out wealthy, I'll give them credit, they're all very intelligent.

But if you were poor but intelligent, and attended a school like Harvard, there's no way they'd ever even consider dropping out, even if they had the cure for baldness, cancer, or any other idea that was guaranteed to make them wealthy. They'd understand that they had no safety net, which a degree from a school like Harvard could provide. And 4 years won't set them back that much.
 
BiH115 said:
That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and I've seen and heard some SHIT I tell you. As someone who is working on a startup, I can't imagine this is a normal response, given by a normal individual. I know I would want people who understand the value of a dollar and understand that the most expensive is not always the best. It's common sense you'd think, but oh how it isn't for a lot of people...
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I think you are missing the distinction between 'having a very successful business and being reasonably successful and wealthy' and 'being one of the richest billionaires in the country'.

The latter group just blows money on any wild and crazy idea as it comes up, as a total loss on the investment is not even an inconvenience, and any given investment actually catching ON and becoming a thousandfold increase on what they put down is what it takes to accelerate to the top.

That DOES NOT mean 'you need to be borderline reckless to be wealthy and successful'...but it does mean you need to do that to have a chance at reaching the TOP.
Nytegard said:
This is probably the most important part. I get frustrated with everyone mentioning rags to riches stories when in reality it's riches to mega riches stories.

While they did start out wealthy, I'll give them credit, they're all very intelligent.

But if you were poor but intelligent, and attended a school like Harvard, there's no way they'd ever even consider dropping out, even if they had the cure for baldness, cancer, or any other idea that was guaranteed to make them wealthy. They'd understand that they had no safety net, which a degree from a school like Harvard could provide. And 4 years won't set them back that much.
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Even considering, though - outside of the whole 'built-in safety net' these people have by coming from upper-middle-/upper- class backgrounds...

...just HAVING that kind of economic background is a big part of the 'intelligence' they DO have. Being able to eat good, healthy, food...every meal of every day. Having a stable family that can put money to solve health issues proactively, access to capable doctors/dentists/optometrists/etc, clean and safe home environment, support for education/homework/attendance all the way through primary schools (heck, likely being in some of the best NEIGHBORHOODS to go to the best primary schools), etc.

It's not just the 'safety net' that their successful family provides them as they enter business and their later careers, but a huge part of the "intelligence" they START that with, also comes from the same source.
 
Its all in your credit score these days, and even those most jobs require a masters at least now, people are still able to get these jobs thru their own hookups. So hence, its who you blow.

So get down on your knees and smile like q donut,boy :D
 
dderidex said:
I think you are missing the distinction between 'having a very successful business and being reasonably successful and wealthy' and 'being one of the richest billionaires in the country'.

The latter group just blows money on any wild and crazy idea as it comes up, as a total loss on the investment is not even an inconvenience, and any given investment actually catching ON and becoming a thousandfold increase on what they put down is what it takes to accelerate to the top.

That DOES NOT mean 'you need to be borderline reckless to be wealthy and successful'...but it does mean you need to do that to have a chance at reaching the TOP.
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I don't disagree with you at all, I think my point was basically more so towards the fact that this one person did not get a job because of that. I meant to keep it very general to that specific example, but ended up making it seem like I was oblivious to the fact that big risk = big potential reward.
 
Those with college degrees who become billionaires I would bet that a good majority of them say that their degree itself isn't what allowed them to reach the level they achieved. But rather who they met along the way. This doesn't mean that they met someone rich along the way. But rather they met their future business partner or mentor while in college. What I would be most interested in is the percentage of billionaires who never went to college. Because that number would be far more indicative of the realities of achieving wealth in the world today. The percentages will certainly shift towards the mean the lower you get on the wealth distribution as far as the percentage of people with no college degree.
 
The other 3/4 who had degrees also could have become billionaires if they dropped out.

This doesn't say shit one way or another about college degrees.

Undergrad was/is the biggest scam. Wasted years and tens of thousands of dollars on general education requirements that I don't care/remember shit about..... e.g Chicano studies, linguistics, and I forget what else.
 
sfsuphysics said:
You really should go with that college degree, because if you think that 1 in 4 billionaires were college dropouts means there is a 25% chance to become a billionaire then you need a class in statistics ;)
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Kids today are just not as smart as we used to make them to be. Is there a reason you can't even read between the lines? You did go to college and have a degree, right?
 
snowcrash said:
Kids today are just not as smart as we used to make them to be. Is there a reason you can't even read between the lines? You did go to college and have a degree, right?
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Yup, it had to happen sooner or later. The inevitable grumpy grandparent commenting about the devolution of humankind as exhibited in some trait that's supposedly in a state of decline in "kids these days."
 
snowcrash said:
Kids today are just not as smart as we used to make them to be. Is there a reason you can't even read between the lines? You did go to college and have a degree, right?
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Oh I went to college, and have a degree, a few of them actually. I understood full well what you were aiming for with your statement, it just did not make any logical sense any way you slice it, and was the perfect thing to pick apart along the same lines of people who complain that "Today no one spells very well or uses good grammer<sic>"
 
dr.kevin said:
The other 3/4 who had degrees also could have become billionaires if they dropped out.

This doesn't say shit one way or another about college degrees.

Undergrad was/is the biggest scam. Wasted years and tens of thousands of dollars on general education requirements that I don't care/remember shit about..... e.g Chicano studies, linguistics, and I forget what else.
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Uh, how did you waste 'years' on gen ed requirements? You can knock them out in one semester with the exception of your two English courses...which plenty of people on this forum desperately need. You forgot what else because there isn't much more beyond that...maybe math, art, and history/government.
 
snowcrash said:
Kids today are just not as smart as we used to make them to be. Is there a reason you can't even read between the lines? You did go to college and have a degree, right?
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Is there a reason you don't realize things like sarcasm and context are easily lost in non-personal forms of communication such as a forum?
 
Grahamkracka said:
Uh, how did you waste 'years' on gen ed requirements? You can knock them out in one semester with the exception of your two English courses...which plenty of people on this forum desperately need. You forgot what else because there isn't much more beyond that...maybe math, art, and history/government.
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In Texas the gen eds are 42+ hours. 2 Englishes (sic), 2 Science, 1 Math (plus 1 to 3 remedial depending on how good you maths is (sic)), 1 Art, 2 History, 2 Government, 1 Lit/Humanities, 1 Socio/Psych, 2 Electives. If you're some kind of ultra humanite you might do that in a year. No way you're doing it in a semester.

No chicano studies or linguistics in that list either.
 
GaryJohnson said:
In Texas the gen eds are 42+ hours. 2 Englishes (sic), 2 Science, 1 Math (plus 1 to 3 remedial depending on how good you maths is (sic)), 1 Art, 2 History, 2 Government, 1 Lit/Humanities, 1 Socio/Psych, 2 Electives. If you're some kind of ultra humanite you might do that in a year. No way you're doing it in a semester.

No chicano studies or linguistics in that list either.
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I got my undergrad in Texas. I sometimes forget that the math and science gen eds are directly applicable for what I needed in subsequent classes anyway. I took CLEP tests for government, history, and humanities so I didn't have to take those. All in all I only had a little under a semesters worth of gen eds that weren't math or science related.
 
I think there are a lot of misconceptions on why a degree is or is not important. There is a lot of background into why many occupations required a degree. There are a number of things that a college education benefits.

Among the most prominent of these are learning how to broaden your education by learning things you would not otherwise be interested in. This helps an individual learn not to outright dismiss something at first because it isn't in their "wheelhouse".

Another huge factor in college education is learning to research and write papers. Throughout college you continually do this, helping the individual through repetition. So that when you go into the world and have a job that requires you to write papers, you will be properly prepared. I can't stress enough how important this is. I have spent most of my last 6 years fixing the writing of other individuals, especially on proposals.

The last important lesson I will mention here (there are many more btw) often learned in college is networking with people. Learning to work in groups with complete strangers, meeting people of different cultures and backgrounds, and generally breaking down barriers and learning to interact with a larger diversity of individuals.

Now how does this apply to this particular article? Well, many of the "drop out" billionaires on that list still went to college and still learned these valuable lessons in college. A number of them also had prep school experience having come from wealthy families. So really the focus is a bit misplaced on whether college is necessary to become a billionaire, what is necessary are many of the skills that one normally gets in college.

So now to the question of whether college is necessary. It all depends on the jobs you are going for. If you want to be in a trade, then college isn't really necessary. If you want a professional job where you will need to write papers, work with people from different backgrounds and be challenged to work with things outside of your normal experience, then college is worth it. If you already have the experience before you go to college, or in the first few years of college, then it may not be necessary to finish. However, as others mentioned without that degree, the employer doesn't really know if you have the necessary education to progress far in the company. Remember, it isn't just about whether you can do the current job, but how far in the company could you progress? That faster and higher its employees progress, the more likely the company will do better.
 
NoOther said:
Another huge factor in college education is learning to research and write papers. Throughout college you continually do this, helping the individual through repetition. So that when you go into the world and have a job that requires you to write papers, you will be properly prepared. I can't stress enough how important this is. I have spent most of my last 6 years fixing the writing of other individuals, especially on proposals.
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YMMV. My experience with undergrad college term/research papers is that they're usually B.S. that's been fluffed out to meet some arbitrary minimum length requirement and awkwardly injected with quotations and key(buzz?)words to meet requirements for sources and relatable course content.
 
And what's the proportion of Self Made Billionaires of all College Drop Outs? Probably extremely low. Genius level people, motivated innovators and the just plain lucky will get by no matter what. Unfortunately, no matter what, they are a very small portion of the population and their life experiences do not at all transfer to any other part of the population. They're outliers.
 
I will add one more bit to my previous post. An important thing about being an entrepreneur is just doing it. This cannot be overemphasized enough. Everyone has great ideas, a some of those could be billion dollar ideas, however only a fraction of a fraction try to implement them. When people ask me how I got into business, I say, I just stopped complaining about the crap my employer did wrong and took what I had learned and tried to do it better on my own. Sometimes, I took jobs, just so I could learn how others did it right. But in the end, it is just about doing it. Failure is guaranteed, but if you understand that and look at is a learning experience, eventually you will learn enough to succeed. Also, don't be obsessed about being first to market or that someone else already has the same product. I hate being first to market, I have a product now that is first to market and it is my biggest headache. It is better to be the 2nd, 3rd or 4th to market because you can learn from everyone's mistakes and use their mistakes to sell your own product. OK enough Tony Robbins crap I have a tonne of work that isn't getting done.
 
GaryJohnson said:
YMMV. My experience with undergrad college term/research papers is that they're usually B.S. that's been fluffed out to meet some arbitrary minimum length requirement and awkwardly injected with quotations and key(buzz?)words to meet requirements for sources and relatable course content.
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I usually had the opposite problems of keeping papers under the arbitrary max length.
 
I read this in a very different way, there is a pivotal time when a product segment is exploding, this time is when billionaires are made. And the best people to take advantage of that are often young college aged kids and dropping out so they can really focus on this business is smart or even needed.

But lets make no mistake almost all of these people came from very financially stable families. In fact they probably weren't worried in the least because even if they did fail they could go back to college again. None of this rags to riches BS. That is why they had a safety net and an almost naïve approach to life that would allow them to throw what poorer people would think is the chance of a lifetime out at a whim to go after a random company idea because getting into an ivy league school was nothing to these people. The other 75% of billionaires who did finish college probably were able to do so because unlike many of us with mommy and daddy forking over the bill they didn't have to work at all. Try starting a company if you have to work to pay for college and do classes and know if you fail it will be back to the poor house for you.

There is a pretty good article on NPR about a lady who followed a bunch of girls through college and she witnesses how the experience is much harder for the poor girls who got in on scholarships and grades than the rich girls who can party and do whatever and still take unpaid internships and on average end up more successful. Many of these financially stable people aren't even worried because their parents are even lining them up decent jobs if everything fails. Essentially its a lot easier to throw all your chips and time at something when losing all of it is fairly inconsequential.

I wont bet one way or another on college, college gives people a lot of opportunities. That said there are other ways to get such opportunities that don't cost 15k / year. Before college was all the rage and everyone had to go people joined social clubs like the free masons, lions clubs, etc.... These were places were people could do similar networking and brainstorming, the kind of places where ideas and people came together. And I think that at some point people are realling going to question the college education because the cost vs payoff is rapidly shrinking for many. That doesn't even include all the people who don't make it.

People like to say you make more on average if you goto college, but its sort of a catch 22, because if you have a high paying job now days you just sort of request people have an education even if the job doesn't need it, why would you do this? Why not, there are so many people with college educations its pretty much a joke. If McDonalds could hire all people who have phds because there were so many of them they probably would lol.
 
GaryJohnson said:
YMMV. My experience with undergrad college term/research papers is that they're usually B.S. that's been fluffed out to meet some arbitrary minimum length requirement and awkwardly injected with quotations and key(buzz?)words to meet requirements for sources and relatable course content.
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Grahamkracka said:
I usually had the opposite problems of keeping papers under the arbitrary max length.
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You get the same BS min/max lengths in jobs as well. I have to deal with this for proposal, engineering, and design documents all the time. The point of the exercise is mainly getting you used to writing papers/documents and secondly learning to cope with the arbitrary rules and still write a concise paper.
 
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