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Businesses are very financially rewarding to those who "complete" them, much more so than degrees can be. Your upside for completing a 4-year bachelors degree

Businesses are very financially rewarding to those who "complete" them, much more so than degrees can be. Your upside for completing a 4-year bachelors degree is maybe $150k/year, best case, if you study CS from an Ivy League and end up at a FAANG. Your upside for building a successful business can potentially reach hundreds of billions of dollars. There's an issue of probabilities: you're probably a lot likely to complete a 4-year degree than found a billion-dollar company. But that's a risk/reward tradeoff, and it's worth remembering that there are a number of "off ramps" from the startup path that may not be billion-dollars but still lead to a job just as good as a college grad would get. Being able to run a profitable, self-sustaining business is viewed very highly by many employers.

WkndTriathlete 7y ago
"There's an issue of probabilities" undersells it. Lifetime average ROI on a college degree over the population has historically outperformed those entering the workforce - either employed or as an entrepreneur - over the past 50 years. And while the ROI difference has shrunk (mostly due to exorbitant tuition increases), it is still more profitable over a person's lifetime - on average - to go to college instead of starting a business. Georgetown actually did a fantastic site that shows ROI for a variety of institutions: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/collegeroi/ https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/collegeroi/