Famous People who never went to University
Do you have life and work experience but no uni degree?
Many famous people, and some of the richest people in the world, never went to university. They used their first years out of school to start work, travel, or spend time trying out some of the careers that they had always been interested in. They also used this precious time to create contacts and relationships with people who would help them long into the future.
These accomplished individuals are proof that you don’t have to go to college to be a winner. Even if you attend for a short time, you don’t have to graduate to be a success.
A 2010 Bloomberg study shows that the number one source of CEOs of S&P 500 companies was the ‘school of hard knocks’, in other words, these guys never went to uni, and some never even finished high school! The number three source of CEOs was Harvard. Go figure.
Many people agree that higher education is not necessary to be a success. According to Jurriaan Kamp, Ode magazine editor “Modern education is a wasted investment. It doesn’t deliver what we need the most: creative answers to the challenges of our times… It isn’t a surprise that many of the people who’ve had the greatest influence on our times were—from the perspective of education—failures.”
Woody Allen, famous Hollywood director, is one of the most famous college dropouts. In fact, he was actually thrown out of New York University after one semester for poor grades. He admitted “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”
John Carmack, founder of Armadillo Aerospace, cofounder of Id Software (the company that sold 10 million copies of Dome and Quake games) dropped out of school at 14 years and was sent to a juvenile home after breaking into a school to steal an Apple II computer. He attempted college when he was older but dropped out to become a game programmer and start his own company.
Winston Churchill, former British prime minister, flunked his sixth year in high school and was known for doing poorly in school. He applied to the Royal Military Academy after school, but failed the entrance exam three times. When he was finally accepted, he graduated 8th out of a class of 150 students. He never attended college.
The Ones Who Returned
However, some swear that the alternative can be much worse. When Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, was asked by Newsweek magazine, “As a young man you worked summers in a slaughterhouse. What did you learn from that.” His answer? “To go to college.” Sometimes, college is a better alternative.Warren Buffett, billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania after two years attendace. Later in life he enroled in university again to attain his bachelor’s degree and MBA.
As a rule of thumb, all of these people share one thing in common. They all work hard and have had to fight for what they have achieved. The harder you have to fight for something, the more you want it, and the more you are likely to achieve it.
As former president of the United States Thomas Jefferson once said, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
