Generalizing from the successes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that dropping out of college is the way to riches doesnt hold water. They are not merely outliers, they are extreme outliers who in addition to being talented also had a lot of good fortune to be in exactly the right place at the right time. Its not possible to generalize in any meaningful way from such extremes. The bigger problem, to my mind, is that a significant number of young people might consciously decide to try to follow in their footsteps (just as some try too hard to follow in the footsteps of professional athletes, another class of extreme outliers). Just as with professional sports, there simply isnt room in the system for everyone who wants to be hyper-successful to actually be so. Furthermore, despite Peter Thiels insinuations its certainly not true that successful entrepreneurs dont go to college (Thiel himself completed his bachelors degree and got a law degree as well). Chasing a dream is one thing. Betting the farm on chasing a far fetched dream of extreme riches in a way that leaves you without an out if you miss is another. And despite the claims of Thiel and others, people with college degrees do, on the whole, earn more money and have lower rates of unemployment than those who dont. To be fair, correlation doesnt prove causation -- its possible that e. g. theres some factor in people that both makes for success and encourages completing ones degree -- but its a big difference nonetheless.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 23:05:45 +0000
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