On this forum I would like to propose a discussion rather than a debate between multiple counterparts, so please put in your input. College to many individuals is a social initiation process to help us conform to the broad and large middle class. Countless of well known people, predominantly artists and entrepreneurs, have been successful without going to college (ex: Taylor Swift, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett (he dropped out but then went back to the university of Nebraska), Miley Freaking Cyrus to Freaking Justin Bieber, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Marshall Matthers, Dr Dre (not to mention he got in a 3 billion dollar deal with apple on beats), Ice Cube, Kendrick Lamar, Ozzy Osborn, Co-founders of dropbox, founders of Google, Richard Branson, Ben Milne, John Mackey, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Abraham Lincoln (although education was different way back when but still), Lorde, ). Please put your thoughts on this discussion if you think college is worth it, and to make things fun try not to answer based on the philosophy of status, for that is not a valid answer?
I don’t think Warren Buffett dropped out - I think he transferred from Wharton to the University of Nebraska. Also, many people cite the Google founders but they dropped out of graduate school. Sergey Brin got his BS from the University of Maryland and spent several years at Stanford; Larry Page got his BS at Michigan and his MS from Stanford before dropping out of the PhD program.
College is worth it.
Yes, there are many people who have “made it” without college. But three things often stand out in these lists of people, which I’ve seen in a lot of places:
- They have found success in a field where talent/skill is more important than education. All of the entertainers and musicians fall under that umbrella - selling records isn’t about having a college degree, and honestly youth and beauty will get you a lot farther than the degree. It’s often better to start a career as a pop star at 16 when you’re thin and pretty and can easily connect with potential fans than it is to try and start in your late 20s.
In the case of the tech entrepreneurs, their skill at coding and inventing a new product that had broad utility for people is what won them fortune. Particularly in the early days of the tech business, you could learn how to program relatively easily. Even now there are many students who are already programming by the time they leave high school (or earlier). But there’s an additional thing I’ll note in point 3.
That’s great - but the problem is that these days, many fields are not like that. Very few people are going to invent something that’s going to make them famous and rich; most of us will end up working for someone else (probably one of those people). And when they hire us into their roles, they want credentials. Take a look at some software developer jobs or marketing jobs at music companies or engineering jobs at Beats, and I bet you all those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.
- They are an example from a bygone ear. In Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, and Lincoln’s time, college education was very rare and reserved for a small class of people. It was so rare that it was completely unnecessary for success and high-level jobs until relatively recently.
But even beyond that - Larry Ellison dropped out of UIUC in 1966. In 1966, only 12.5% of the men in the U.S. over the age of 25 had a bachelor’s degree. In 1974, when Bill Gates joined Honeywell, it was about 16.9%. Compare that to about 32% today (for both men and women).
- MANY of the people on lists like this may have “made it” without college degrees, but often they had connections or wealth (or both) that enabled them to succeed. Many of them also spent a year or two in college, where they made connections and learned things that helped them in their business. This fact is often left out.
Let’s take Bill Gates - he’s a perfect example. Bill G’s father was a prominent lawyer and his mom was on the board of directors for influential organizations in the Seattle area; her father was the president of a national bank. He went to a private prep schoo, and in the eighth grade the Mothers Club at his school bought a computer and a block of computer time on one of GE’s computer for the school’s students. That’s where Bill G learned to program. Do you think too many non-wealthy kids in 1968 had access to a computer and the minds at GE? One of Bill G’s classmates at Lakeside, Paul Allen, later helped him get a job at Honeywell when he dropped out of Harvard. Bill G also attended Harvard for a year, which is where he met Steve Ballmer and some other people that were influential in the early formation of Microsoft.
Drew Houston (one of the founders of Dropbox) actually did graduate from MIT; Arash Ferdowski dropped out only in his senior year. Both of them went to excellent high schools in wealthy areas of the country. Mark Zuckerberg grew up wealthy; his father hired a software developer to tutor him privately, and he and went to Exeter before attending Harvard. He also met important people AT Harvard who were instrumental in the launch of Facebook. Larry Page did graduate from college, but additionally both of his parents were some of the earliest computer scientists in the U.S. - his father was a professor of computer science at Michigan State and his mother taught computer programming at a community college. Sergey Brin’s father was a math professor at Maryland his mother was a researcher at NASA (and, as I pointed out, Brin also finished college). Richard Branson comes from a wealthy family and attended private prep schools and had support from his parents.
People list these people and can remember their stories because they exceptions. Think about the people who work for these people. Sheryl Sandberg has an MBA. Satya Nadella has an MS in computer science and an MBA, and before him, Steve Ballmer did actually finish at Harvard; and all the EVPs and senior staff at Microsoft have college degrees. Tim Cook, who was an SVP at Apple before he took over as CEO, has an MBA. Eric Schmidt actually finished his PhD at Berkeley. Ruth Porat, the CFO of Google, has two master’s degrees. Sundar Pichai, current Product Chief and incoming CEO of Google, has an MS in engineering and an MBA.
The point is, when these famous college dropouts/non-attendees needed to hire someone to work for them, they select people with college degrees.
I am willing to bet cash dollars that most of the executives, managers, marketers, producers, etc. in all of those musical artists’ careers have college degrees, too.
The short of it is: if you come from a wealthy family who can help bankroll your dreams and/or have an extraordinary talent for something (particularly music or tech), there’s a greater chance that you can find success without a college degree. (Remembering that for every Evan Speigel and Mark Zuckerbergs there are a hundred Joe Schmidts you’ve never heard of who couldn’t get VC funding, or couldn’t get their idea off the ground, or whose idea wasn’t actually as good as they thought it was, or who actually did taste a little bit of success before their idea crashed and burned. The same is triply true for aspiring musicians or artists.)
If - like the vast majority of us - you want to at least start out by working at an established company for someone else and work your way up, or want to learn some skills before you strike out on your own (which is actually a far more common path for the aspiring CEO than bursting out of the blue), or honestly just want to work for someone else for pretty much forever and have no dreams of building your own brand or being an entrepreneur - college is probably the way to go for that. That is, of course, unless you want to enter a trade like plumbing or electrical work or something, in which case you need to go to trade school.
Are you looking for help with a school assignment?
College is worth it for some people. For others, it’s a waste of time and money.
@intparent I just want an elaborative discussion, I’ve just been reading a lot lately.
@juillet Actually in some aspects you are right but I have to disagree on some. Its kind of funny because I did a paper on Facebook’s privacy and I did go into the history for the foundation of Facebook and Mark, although he had the privilege of a private tutor, he came from a predominant upper middle class lifestyle, not necessarily wealthy. And you are right on the idea for connections, Mark did in fact have connections to start Facebook by going to different universities to showcase his product to the masses and then the public began to notice his product, he took his company onto an IPO, and that is pretty much a short summary of how Facebook came to be. Also, Steve Jobs on another hand, when he dropped out already had connections to work for a computer company because of the skill he made prior to college since he developed small tech products such as the blue box, or building vast amounts of radios and TVs with Steve Wozniak. I think maybe big capitalistic press companies are propagandizing too much of the “American Dream” without giving into retrospect about the different aspects for these successful individuals, and I believe that is probably one of the primary causes for dropout is, is the manipulation of the press.
@juillet and the eco of Lockheed Martin has an MBA
@juillet Larry Page, although his parents were college professors, he didn’t necessarily grow up “wealthy” he came from upper middle class lifestyle.
@juillet Btw Taylor Swift came from a wealthy family, her father was a descendent of three presidential bankers.
@juillet Yet there are phenomenal opera baritone singers such as Quinn Kelsey who didn’t come from a wealthy family but still managed to travel the world because of his wonderful talent.
Lets all dwell on the difference between wealthy and upper middle class now. No one identifies as wealthy these days…everyone is upper middle class.
@suzyQ7 Says who, would you consider George Lucas to be upper middle class?
@suzyQ7 Not necessarily, take for example Donald Trump. If you read his book The Art of the Deal you can instantly tell he came from old money as he implements socioeconomic behaviors of the rich such as enrolling their children to private school at a very early age, taking them to see broadway shows, have a decorator for the house, be on the head for a few charities, inviting well known people to meetings etc. The upper middle class in general, only practice a few of what the rich may do such as send their children to private schools and see broadway shows, just to name a few, but rarely do they enact on the same behaviors as frequently as the rich.
Good question. It depends on what you think college is for. For those who want to become doctors, lawyers, architects, academics…fields that rely heavily on credentialing, yes you do still have to go to college. For those who see college primarily as a job training ground(but not for the above professional careers), college is more than what most people need to get a good job, except maybe for engineers. For those who think college is a place to enrich the mind, read the great books - you can do that on your own, with free books from the public library, and there are plenty of online forums to discuss your interests with like minded. For those who think college is a great place to party for 4 years and have a good time, college is good place for it, although Venice beach is a lot cheaper.
I know of many people in all walks of life, from IT to banking, fashion design, business, who did not go to college and yet rise and succeed in the corporate world. I also know of many people who graduated from college and remain unemployed or underemployed (work in jobs that do not require a degree) years out of college.
There are front doors to get into large corporations, and there are back doors. The back door is usually through contracting firms. All large corporations employ lots of temps, especially in this new temp economy. Many have an ecosystem of temp agencies in the same town whose sole business is to provide contingency employees to these corporations. A high school grad with so-so grades can easily go work as a contract employee for these temp agencies, do a great job, impress the boss and eventually work their way into a blue badge (full time) position at one of these large corporations. The temp economy is America’s apprenticeship program, but too many people don’t know about it. I know of many college grads who have to go to these temp agencies to work for a couple of years before they can land a job with a major corporation. Often tens of thousands in debt, they find themselves working alongside high school grads who never bothered with college and ended up in the same jobs.
After your first job, no one cares where you went to school, or if you went to one at all. That’s the secret that colleges don’t want you to know, and further perpetuated by the fear mongering media and websites like this that are crawling with prestige ho’s.