6 ms·

More than 20% of self-made billionaires never completed college

46 points by oz 18y ago

ojbyrne 18y ago
Hmm, that means 80% did start or complete college. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  Yes, the base rate of college graduation in the general population is a good bit below 80 percent.
- ks 18y ago
  And it only says that 80% completed college. It doesn't say how many of the 20% started their college education. Many internet billionaires met in college and dropped out because they had a great idea (of course, most of the other drop outs probably didn't succeed, but that's another story).
- comster 18y ago
  Lets put it this way. The 20% lead, the 80% is a "no-brainer"
omnivore 18y ago
Aah, more of this madness. The only people who can afford to drop out of college to pursue a startup are those with parents who will subsidize them while they do it, have extensive contacts or those who get very, very lucky. It's just not practical advice and society doesn't treat folks in the status quo particularly well who do so. You might get far, but inevitably you'll get stuck in a rut somewhere along the way, if you end up out of startupland, because of your lack of an degree or sometimes, an advanced degree or two. It's not fair, but that's the way the world is. If brilliant folks were more interested in finding ways to bust the higher ed/accreditation monopoly, rather than building the next Facebook or Twitter-killer, perhaps we can solve this problem before our kids become adults.
- jrockway 18y ago
  I don't really see this as a problem. After college, nobody asks or cares if you went to college. So while you do need to have some skills to get a job, you don't need a piece of paper anymore. (Not in the programming industry, anyway.) If you want to do a startup, spend the 4 years that you would have spent in college learning how to program and making money doing that. Then, you'll be able to support your own startup.
  - omnivore 18y ago
    And if you fail, go back to college and get the degree. You say that no one cares. But job postings all over the web pretty much speak the opposite. Google doesn't just want degrees, they want degrees from top schools. So sure, if someone wants to work for a fly-by-night operation that MIGHT strike it rich, have a blast. But if they actually want health insurance someday, then it might be handy to get the degree about the way. People ask if you went to college and if you graduated, after that, no one cares it's true. But without it, you better have a compelling story or have contacts that "won't care." Ten years ago or more, you could easily get away without having a degree. But graduating NOW and expecting to do that? Yeah right. And if it were easy to take 4 years and learn to program and "make money doing it" without the slightest clue how to get there, then everyone would do it. College affords you more than enough free time to "learn to program on the side to make money doing it" while also giving you a backup plan, in case your brilliant plans don't work out.
    - modoc 18y ago
      Google cares. A lot. They reached out to me to offer me a position, and then retracted the offer once they learned the lack of degrees on my resume wasn't just a space saving mechanism. I've never had another company turn me down, even if they specifically "required" bachelors in CS, etc... in the job posting. And I'm not talking about "fly-by-night operations". Large companies, Fortune 500s, traditional non-tech focused companies, etc... Assuming that you aren't on a 100% scholarship, someone (your parents or you by working part time) is paying for your rent and food. I think most places (Google aside) would hire someone with 1 year of contributing to a relevant open source project, or a couple small web applications launched, over someone with 4 years of learning the technology from 2-5 years ago. Experience DOING relevant work always trumps a college degree, especially in the tech field. If you want to get a degree, that's great. I won't look down on you or even think for a second that you're wasting your time. But it's certainly not the only or even the best path.
Anon84 18y ago
If you look at it the other way around 80% of self-made billionaires went to college
- breck 18y ago
  Furthermore: Less than 50% of people went to college. Despite that, 80% of self-made billionaires went to college.
  - tc 18y ago
    (eq 'correlation 'causation) => NIL Which could also be explained by observing that people born into more fortunate socioeconomic circumstances, with all that entails (different value systems, better health, better connections, better early education, etc.), have both a higher probability of going to college and a higher probability of becoming billionaires. The two outcomes are correlated, but one is not necessarily causal of the other. Completing college could even marginally decrease someone's chances of becoming a billionaire, and you could still see the same correlation. see: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation
    - dusklight 18y ago
      What you say is true but neither of the two posts above yours stated or implied any causation.
      - tc 18y ago
        My reading of the parent post was that the commenter was implying a causation by suggesting the difference between the percentage of college attendees in the general population vs the percentage of college attendees in the population of billionaires was conclusive of something significant ("despite that..."). If readers didn't understand the parent and grandparent posts to imply something more significant than basic math, I doubt the posts would have received so many upvotes.
trjordan 18y ago
Put another way, 70% of self-made billionaires completed college. This strikes me as higher than the national average, so completing college increases the chances of you becoming a billionaire. Also, with a sample size of only 292, I find it hard to believe you could precisely determine what made them a billionaire. In fact, for all they measured, you could probably find 100 people of each who shared all of the same characteristics and are not billionaires.
- tc 18y ago
  Put another way, 70% of self-made billionaires completed college. This strikes me as higher than the national average, so completing college increases the chances of you becoming a billionaire. Your conclusion does not follow from the data. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation
meterplech 18y ago
I think the idea of dropping out of college fits in with the general startup mold. Startups are disruptive, they do not follow the traditional path of what's out there. Likewise, dropping out of college and leaving that safety net is certainly disruptive. It takes a special kind of person to do that. Also, it is unclear how many of these billionaires came from the world of tech startups, inherently more disruptive than say, finance.
- ks 18y ago
  "Some of the most common professions among the parents of American billionaires (for whom we could find the information) were engineer, accountant and small-business owner." It seems to me that most of them had a safety net - their parents.
  - thismat 18y ago
    That's quite possible for a lot of people. I never deemed this an option at all though, I just wouldn't admit I couldn't do it. I paid my bills, lived frugally (but happily) and basically just...lived on less than I made? So, were these last few traits something my parents graciously bestowed upon me? Sadly, no. My parents were frugal to a point, but not cheap. Budgeting wasn't something I really learned the concept of in depth, until I went out into the cold. Avoiding credit wasn't something my parents did, though they never abused it or amassed huge amounts of debt, and could always pay everything off (I didn't know or care about this at the time). The thing my parents gave me was a longing for independence, success, and the knowledge that if there is ever something I need to learn, nothing stops me from learning it. Sometimes, no matter which route a person chooses, they will succeed just because of their willpower, hardwork, sacrifice and perseverance. Consequently I think money is wasted on studies like this, each individual finds their own path to success, even if similar.
vaksel 18y ago
Here is something I wonder. Since most of the billionaires are old farts...how many of them didn't go to college, because it wasn't as big of a requirement back then. I think the dropout # is more important than the "never went to college". Because those are the people who saw success early on.
ivankirigin 18y ago
100% of billionaires are outliers. Try not to extract patterns hoping for repeatable success.
- gills 18y ago
  Well said. I would guess (and it's only a guess) that people with the drive to become billionaires would find a way regardless of formal education, and that there is no recipe you can follow to reach an outlier level of wealth.
  - marcusbooster 18y ago
    Warren Buffet observed the correlation between access and wealth. If you figure what the "rate of genius" is, meaning if genius happens let's say 1 in a 1000, then it would stand to reason that there's more successful people in China and India by the numbers. But if we look at the list of billionaires by nationality* we see the U.S. has the overwhelming majority of them - 359 compared to 28/24. Genius does not equal wealth or even success perhaps, but I think there can be parallels drawn between them. Mr. Buffet himself said he would not have been the success he is if he were born in some place like Peru or something. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_by_nationality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_by_nationa...
- mrtron 18y ago
  I just got the book 'Outliers' as a gift today - it is a fun read.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    It's pretty good. I think he makes some logical leaps in order to tell a better story.
- tsally 18y ago
  Outliers compared to the general population. The subjects here are billionaires; there are enough billionaires in the world to extract statistically significant patterns from that subject group. The article certainly doesn't do this, but you imply that billionaires as a group cannot be analyzed, which is not true at all.
blizkreeg 18y ago
I sometimes wonder if startups and silicon valley culture have been romanticized and hyped to such an extent that the immediate thing that comes to the mind of young hackers is to drop out of college to pursue/start a startup! Dreams are great, and so is working towards them but I don't think one should get carried away by this madness and start buying into and believing this fallacy. A startup is not simply about working on a cool project or some fancy idea that you believe is fancy, it's in essence a business. A solid, successful business takes many hands and years to build. Not each of us is a Gates. A few years finishing college is not going to set you back and will certainly not get in the way of the brilliant entrepreneur. I'm all for working on your passionate ideas, creating something of value, building a valuable startup -- but come on, let's not erode the basics and ignore the foundation of the building in hopes of getting to the top floor fast. It is foolish to take a few examples of outliers and think of it as a pattern in general.
hs 18y ago
it does not mean college 'enable' the 80% counterpart
vincentvwyl 18y ago
You have to be very careful with following those kinds of trends, particularly as there are generational factors that play a role. The 'no college' approach may have been a perfectly valid way to do it during the boom years, but it doesn't necessary make sense today or tomorrow. I found this HBR-article particularly valuable at how society changes over time: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?articleID=R0707B&ml_action=get-article&print=true&ml_issueid=BR0707 http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/artic...
hs 18y ago
i was reading "the china study" and there's a part about gene. a disease grows about 3% / year while population maybe <1%, conclusion? gene alone cannot possibly be responsible for the disease so maybe it's better to compare degree_rate and billionaire_rate ... if #degree-holders grow by 10%/annum while #billionaires grow by 2%/annum then college alone cannot possibly be responsible for billionaire ok, i'll say it ... college is overrated, over time degrees worth less due to supply/demand
jimwalker 18y ago
20% of self-made billionaires parents hated them between the ages of 17 and 23.
intellectronica 18y ago
That's not that surprising, if you take into consideration that the percentage is still higher than the average in the population. It's only interesting if you assume that going to college is a must for any success in life, but that position is so ridiculous that you don't need any real data to refute it.
rfurmani 18y ago
Unjustified or incorrect statements: * Want to become a billionaire? Up your chances by dropping out of college * mathematical prowess is hereditary (‽) * Failure early on is a necessary condition for success (a recent article here statistically showed that failure does not increase the chance of success in startups) Also, and this point has been brought up many times in these comments, a number of the billionares began their work at a time when college degrees did not matter as much.
quisxt 18y ago
80% of self-made billionaire's completed college, as opposed to 27% of the US adult population (US Census data). What exactly is your point?
tsally 18y ago
Don't confuse a symptom for a cause. If going to college would have helped the 20%, they would have gone to go to college. Similarly, if it would have helped to skip college, the 80% would have had no qualms about doing so. The cause here is the motivation and skill of a winner that every self-made billionaire has. You're glorifying a symptom by idolizing dropping out of college.
quizbiz 18y ago
It is interesting to note that many self-made billionaires did in fact go to college, they just didn't graduate. Furthermore, many of those billionaires that didn't finish college were accepted to top tier institutions.
comster 18y ago
What'd you learn in school? no, seriously.

46 points by oz 18y ago

ojbyrne 18y ago

Hmm, that means 80% did start or complete college. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

tokenadult 18y ago
Yes, the base rate of college graduation in the general population is a good bit below 80 percent.
ks 18y ago
And it only says that 80% completed college. It doesn't say how many of the 20% started their college education. Many internet billionaires met in college and dropped out because they had a great idea (of course, most of the other drop outs probably didn't succeed, but that's another story).
comster 18y ago
Lets put it this way. The 20% lead, the 80% is a "no-brainer"

omnivore 18y ago

Aah, more of this madness. The only people who can afford to drop out of college to pursue a startup are those with parents who will subsidize them while they do it, have extensive contacts or those who get very, very lucky. It's just not practical advice and society doesn't treat folks in the status quo particularly well who do so. You might get far, but inevitably you'll get stuck in a rut somewhere along the way, if you end up out of startupland, because of your lack of an degree or sometimes, an advanced degree or two. It's not fair, but that's the way the world is. If brilliant folks were more interested in finding ways to bust the higher ed/accreditation monopoly, rather than building the next Facebook or Twitter-killer, perhaps we can solve this problem before our kids become adults.

jrockway 18y ago
I don't really see this as a problem. After college, nobody asks or cares if you went to college. So while you do need to have some skills to get a job, you don't need a piece of paper anymore. (Not in the programming industry, anyway.) If you want to do a startup, spend the 4 years that you would have spent in college learning how to program and making money doing that. Then, you'll be able to support your own startup.
- omnivore 18y ago
  And if you fail, go back to college and get the degree. You say that no one cares. But job postings all over the web pretty much speak the opposite. Google doesn't just want degrees, they want degrees from top schools. So sure, if someone wants to work for a fly-by-night operation that MIGHT strike it rich, have a blast. But if they actually want health insurance someday, then it might be handy to get the degree about the way. People ask if you went to college and if you graduated, after that, no one cares it's true. But without it, you better have a compelling story or have contacts that "won't care." Ten years ago or more, you could easily get away without having a degree. But graduating NOW and expecting to do that? Yeah right. And if it were easy to take 4 years and learn to program and "make money doing it" without the slightest clue how to get there, then everyone would do it. College affords you more than enough free time to "learn to program on the side to make money doing it" while also giving you a backup plan, in case your brilliant plans don't work out.
  - modoc 18y ago
    Google cares. A lot. They reached out to me to offer me a position, and then retracted the offer once they learned the lack of degrees on my resume wasn't just a space saving mechanism. I've never had another company turn me down, even if they specifically "required" bachelors in CS, etc... in the job posting. And I'm not talking about "fly-by-night operations". Large companies, Fortune 500s, traditional non-tech focused companies, etc... Assuming that you aren't on a 100% scholarship, someone (your parents or you by working part time) is paying for your rent and food. I think most places (Google aside) would hire someone with 1 year of contributing to a relevant open source project, or a couple small web applications launched, over someone with 4 years of learning the technology from 2-5 years ago. Experience DOING relevant work always trumps a college degree, especially in the tech field. If you want to get a degree, that's great. I won't look down on you or even think for a second that you're wasting your time. But it's certainly not the only or even the best path.

Anon84 18y ago

If you look at it the other way around 80% of self-made billionaires went to college

breck 18y ago
Furthermore: Less than 50% of people went to college. Despite that, 80% of self-made billionaires went to college.
- tc 18y ago
  (eq 'correlation 'causation) => NIL Which could also be explained by observing that people born into more fortunate socioeconomic circumstances, with all that entails (different value systems, better health, better connections, better early education, etc.), have both a higher probability of going to college and a higher probability of becoming billionaires. The two outcomes are correlated, but one is not necessarily causal of the other. Completing college could even marginally decrease someone's chances of becoming a billionaire, and you could still see the same correlation. see: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation
  - dusklight 18y ago
    What you say is true but neither of the two posts above yours stated or implied any causation.
    - tc 18y ago
      My reading of the parent post was that the commenter was implying a causation by suggesting the difference between the percentage of college attendees in the general population vs the percentage of college attendees in the population of billionaires was conclusive of something significant ("despite that..."). If readers didn't understand the parent and grandparent posts to imply something more significant than basic math, I doubt the posts would have received so many upvotes.

trjordan 18y ago

Put another way, 70% of self-made billionaires completed college. This strikes me as higher than the national average, so completing college increases the chances of you becoming a billionaire. Also, with a sample size of only 292, I find it hard to believe you could precisely determine what made them a billionaire. In fact, for all they measured, you could probably find 100 people of each who shared all of the same characteristics and are not billionaires.

tc 18y ago
Put another way, 70% of self-made billionaires completed college. This strikes me as higher than the national average, so completing college increases the chances of you becoming a billionaire. Your conclusion does not follow from the data. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Warning Sign I7: Confusing Correlation with Causation

meterplech 18y ago

I think the idea of dropping out of college fits in with the general startup mold. Startups are disruptive, they do not follow the traditional path of what's out there. Likewise, dropping out of college and leaving that safety net is certainly disruptive. It takes a special kind of person to do that. Also, it is unclear how many of these billionaires came from the world of tech startups, inherently more disruptive than say, finance.

ks 18y ago
"Some of the most common professions among the parents of American billionaires (for whom we could find the information) were engineer, accountant and small-business owner." It seems to me that most of them had a safety net - their parents.
- thismat 18y ago
  That's quite possible for a lot of people. I never deemed this an option at all though, I just wouldn't admit I couldn't do it. I paid my bills, lived frugally (but happily) and basically just...lived on less than I made? So, were these last few traits something my parents graciously bestowed upon me? Sadly, no. My parents were frugal to a point, but not cheap. Budgeting wasn't something I really learned the concept of in depth, until I went out into the cold. Avoiding credit wasn't something my parents did, though they never abused it or amassed huge amounts of debt, and could always pay everything off (I didn't know or care about this at the time). The thing my parents gave me was a longing for independence, success, and the knowledge that if there is ever something I need to learn, nothing stops me from learning it. Sometimes, no matter which route a person chooses, they will succeed just because of their willpower, hardwork, sacrifice and perseverance. Consequently I think money is wasted on studies like this, each individual finds their own path to success, even if similar.

vaksel 18y ago

Here is something I wonder. Since most of the billionaires are old farts...how many of them didn't go to college, because it wasn't as big of a requirement back then. I think the dropout # is more important than the "never went to college". Because those are the people who saw success early on.

ivankirigin 18y ago

100% of billionaires are outliers. Try not to extract patterns hoping for repeatable success.

gills 18y ago
Well said. I would guess (and it's only a guess) that people with the drive to become billionaires would find a way regardless of formal education, and that there is no recipe you can follow to reach an outlier level of wealth.
- marcusbooster 18y ago
  Warren Buffet observed the correlation between access and wealth. If you figure what the "rate of genius" is, meaning if genius happens let's say 1 in a 1000, then it would stand to reason that there's more successful people in China and India by the numbers. But if we look at the list of billionaires by nationality* we see the U.S. has the overwhelming majority of them - 359 compared to 28/24. Genius does not equal wealth or even success perhaps, but I think there can be parallels drawn between them. Mr. Buffet himself said he would not have been the success he is if he were born in some place like Peru or something. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_by_nationality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_by_nationa...
mrtron 18y ago
I just got the book 'Outliers' as a gift today - it is a fun read.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  It's pretty good. I think he makes some logical leaps in order to tell a better story.
tsally 18y ago
Outliers compared to the general population. The subjects here are billionaires; there are enough billionaires in the world to extract statistically significant patterns from that subject group. The article certainly doesn't do this, but you imply that billionaires as a group cannot be analyzed, which is not true at all.

blizkreeg 18y ago

I sometimes wonder if startups and silicon valley culture have been romanticized and hyped to such an extent that the immediate thing that comes to the mind of young hackers is to drop out of college to pursue/start a startup! Dreams are great, and so is working towards them but I don't think one should get carried away by this madness and start buying into and believing this fallacy. A startup is not simply about working on a cool project or some fancy idea that you believe is fancy, it's in essence a business. A solid, successful business takes many hands and years to build. Not each of us is a Gates. A few years finishing college is not going to set you back and will certainly not get in the way of the brilliant entrepreneur. I'm all for working on your passionate ideas, creating something of value, building a valuable startup -- but come on, let's not erode the basics and ignore the foundation of the building in hopes of getting to the top floor fast. It is foolish to take a few examples of outliers and think of it as a pattern in general.

hs 18y ago

it does not mean college 'enable' the 80% counterpart

vincentvwyl 18y ago

You have to be very careful with following those kinds of trends, particularly as there are generational factors that play a role. The 'no college' approach may have been a perfectly valid way to do it during the boom years, but it doesn't necessary make sense today or tomorrow. I found this HBR-article particularly valuable at how society changes over time: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?articleID=R0707B&ml_action=get-article&print=true&ml_issueid=BR0707 http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/artic...

hs 18y ago

i was reading "the china study" and there's a part about gene. a disease grows about 3% / year while population maybe <1%, conclusion? gene alone cannot possibly be responsible for the disease so maybe it's better to compare degree_rate and billionaire_rate ... if #degree-holders grow by 10%/annum while #billionaires grow by 2%/annum then college alone cannot possibly be responsible for billionaire ok, i'll say it ... college is overrated, over time degrees worth less due to supply/demand

jimwalker 18y ago

20% of self-made billionaires parents hated them between the ages of 17 and 23.

intellectronica 18y ago

That's not that surprising, if you take into consideration that the percentage is still higher than the average in the population. It's only interesting if you assume that going to college is a must for any success in life, but that position is so ridiculous that you don't need any real data to refute it.

rfurmani 18y ago

Unjustified or incorrect statements: * Want to become a billionaire? Up your chances by dropping out of college * mathematical prowess is hereditary (‽) * Failure early on is a necessary condition for success (a recent article here statistically showed that failure does not increase the chance of success in startups) Also, and this point has been brought up many times in these comments, a number of the billionares began their work at a time when college degrees did not matter as much.

quisxt 18y ago

80% of self-made billionaire's completed college, as opposed to 27% of the US adult population (US Census data). What exactly is your point?

tsally 18y ago

Don't confuse a symptom for a cause. If going to college would have helped the 20%, they would have gone to go to college. Similarly, if it would have helped to skip college, the 80% would have had no qualms about doing so. The cause here is the motivation and skill of a winner that every self-made billionaire has. You're glorifying a symptom by idolizing dropping out of college.

quizbiz 18y ago

It is interesting to note that many self-made billionaires did in fact go to college, they just didn't graduate. Furthermore, many of those billionaires that didn't finish college were accepted to top tier institutions.

comster 18y ago

What'd you learn in school? no, seriously.