Many entrepreneurs have succeeded without college degrees or higher education. Billionaires such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Steve Jobs (Apple) never graduated from high school, much less college. Other successful entrepreneurs such as Larry Ellison, one of the founders of Oracle; Richard Branson, founder, and owner of Virgin Group; Jack Ma, founder, and CEO of Alibaba; Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans; Phil Knight, who had started Nike with his partner Bill Bowerman in 1962. All these successful people prove that getting a degree is not necessary.
Another billionaire, Evan Spiegel, dropped out of Stanford University. He founded a competitor of Facebook called Snapchat. Snapchat is worth $800 million and is planning on going public with an IPO.
Demi Moore, the actress, and producer, dropped out of her acting school to pursue her career in modeling. She has been involved in several films and TV shows, such as Ghost, A Few Good Men, and Charlie’s Angels. She is more known for her romantic relationships with famous actors, including Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis.
The list of entrepreneurs who have dropped out of college is ranked according to net worth or estimated annual income. The ranking is based on the value of their respective companies in millions of dollars, divided by their age which ranges from 22 to 69 years. Based on these criteria, here are the top 5 famous dropouts:
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Richard Branson (Virgin Group)
Richard Branson is one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. He created and founded the Virgin Group with his brother. Some of Virgin Group’s most successful companies include Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, and the cruise line Royal Caribbean. The group also has several other businesses, including Virgin Records, a music label; Club 18-30 magazine; an art gallery; rock band; film production company Anthem Pictures; television production company named Zodiak Broadcasting; and Outer Island Safaris in Kenya. According to Celebrity Net Worth, his net worth is estimated to be $5.3 billion.
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Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Larry Ellison is also considered one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world today. He is equally famous as the founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, one of the leading software companies that are considered to be one of the most valuable companies in the world. According to Celebrity Net Worth, his net worth is estimated to be over $112 billion.
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
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Evan Spiegel (Snapchat)
Evan Spiegel (age 22) dropped out of Stanford University to pursue his career in Snapchat. He and Bobby Murphy were two college students who created Snapchat after Instagram’s success inspired them. Snapchat has grown rapidly in just a year, jumping from being a projected $3 billion company to being valued at over $800 million with an IPO planned for 2023.
Evan Spiegel (Snapchat)
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Jack Ma (Alibaba)
Jack Ma (age 54) dropped out of China’s Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute to help his family’s business. In 2003, he founded Alibaba, China’s largest online shopping company. Alibaba was able to raise $25 billion when it went public in the United States in 2014. According to Forbes, Jack Ma is the third richest man in China and Asia, with an estimated net worth of over $26 billion
Jack Ma (Alibaba)
Steve Jobs dropped out from Reed College, a liberal arts college located in Oregon. He was a rebellious student who preferred to study poetry over engineering courses. He founded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak in 1976, which became the most valuable company in the history of the world, selling over 100 million iPhones per year.
Although this article does not consider Elon Musk a college dropout, he is one of the most important entrepreneurs today. He is currently involved with more than five companies, including Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity, The Boring Company, and OpenAI. According to Forbes, his net worth is estimated to be $267.3 billion.
Steve Jobs
It turns out that there are reasons aplenty for entrepreneurs not to go the traditional route with higher education. For one thing, many entrepreneurial ideas don’t have anything remotely academic about them, which means you couldn’t find lessons on business administration anywhere near. From the first commercial website to fiber-optic networks, the early internet, and satellite television, there isn’t a single business enterprise that follows the normal academic mold. On top of that, traditional academic institutions take far too long to impart information that is outdated by the time it is taught anyway.
Other than all these reasons, there’s another reason why entrepreneurs don’t go to college:
Money. Even if you did manage to get into an elite institution – which was almost impossible for anyone with a non-traditional background – you would be paying hefty amounts for an education that you can get much cheaper via other means.
Thus, it’s not surprising that more and more students are dropping out, never to finish a college education. Among these students are the world’s top entrepreneurs who don’t have any academic degrees.
A recent study by Instead, a business school in France, looked into the backgrounds of 99 of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. Of these 99 entrepreneurs, only 12 of them went to college. And only one in four went to a university at all – none went to Ivy League or MIT. Of those who didn’t attend college or university, almost half dropped out before they had even completed high school.
Of course, the most famous dropout entrepreneur of our time is Bill Gates. While he had a passion for computer basics and programming at an early age, Gates never received any formal training in computers. Of his entrepreneurial qualities and eventual success, Gates had said that the first business he started was “voluntarily liquidated before it had made any money.”
Michael Dell
Another notable dropout is Michael Dell, one of the richest people in the world today. In an interview with a Fortune magazine journalist, Dell was asked about his lack of college education and said: “I’m self-taught. I think that’s better than going to school. You have to be self-motivated. If there’s no one pushing you, you don’t learn as much. Some professors are great, and some aren’t so great. Of course, if you pay attention in school and hang out with the right people, it will help you succeed later on. But I would rather be self-taught than get a degree from a school that isn’t respected.”
In conclusion, some entrepreneurs become successful without a college degree. In contrast, many others attend college or have an educational background, but they are still considered great entrepreneurs who have left their legacy and mark on civilization through their inventions.
