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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.
Public schools are absolute trash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy
Too many useless classes (as in, something that some people may use, but others won't, due to their career choices)
School is not just vocational training, and the sooner people stop acting like it is, the better things will be for all of us. Even private schools have required classes that have nothing to do with the majority of their graduates' careers, yet somehow you are not calling private schools "trash."
self teaching, homeschooling
I have met people who are "self taught," and I am sorry to say that in all but a few cases, they lacked certain insights or failed to understand concepts that seem elementary to someone with a more formal education. As for homeschooling, I have no problem with that...if you can afford private tutors in each subject you are learning. Or in other words, if you are wealthy, and most people simply are not.
Palm trees and 8
It's a somewhat pointless statement. Going to college doesn't give you skills nor does it ensure you'll be successful. But I'm sure there are far less people who got through college with straight As who have "failed" than people who were on the verge of dropping out the entire time. Dropping out and doing nothing (no trade apprenticeship etc) is a race to the bottom.
But statistically, higher IQ (we're talking better than Mensa level, not dime-a-dozen IQs of 120 or so) tends to correlate with higher ethical standards,
LOL! It might correlate with being more sure of your system of ethics because you are already being told that you are so great in other fields, but my experience in life has been that the more intelligent person is, the more of an asshole he is.
(The exceptions are in the minority but invariably quite depressive. It's like they know that nature built them with the power to tower over others but they just don't want to do something so mean.)