You Are Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa offers some don't-be-a-fool-stay-in-school advice to students that sounds a bit like an old-school Mr. T PSA. TechCrunch CEO Michael Arrington's questioning of whether students need to get any degree or go to college at all may sound appealing — dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did do alright for themselves — but Wadhwa gives some good reasons why you should probably take the school-is-for-chumps argument with a grain of salt. 'The harsh reality,' warns Wadhwa, is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail,' and many big companies won't even consider hiring you for that fallback job without a degree. And, believe it or not, you can still become a tech billionaire later in life even if you're cursed with a PhD." Tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson approaches this question slightly differently; here's an analysis he made a few years ago, with the conclusion that the college investment pays off only about half the time.

Comments

Trust fund baby

[AnonymousClown]

Gates had a million dollar trust fund - he's a trust fund baby.

Therefore, he could take obscene amounts of risk and never have to worry about ending up in the gutter or having bill collectors after him. And if you add in that his Dad is a high powered attorney ...

Gates was a perfect storm of trust fund, brains, timing, and ambition.