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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My brother dropped out of college.  He works in IT and has done well.

FWIW, I have a relative with multiple graduate degrees who has done absolutely nothing with his life.

I have met several billionaires who either dropped out of college or never went, one of which is Bill Gates.  The others are in the real estate, coal, and oil businesses.  That doesn't count Ted Turner, who was thrown out of Brown (and who I have never met). Smart, hardworking risk-takers, all. In a way, I think it's probably easier to build a huge business like that when you don't have a college degree.  College makes it easier to settle into a cushy, medium to high-wage job that will make you comfortable enough to be afraid to gamble everything on a dream.  [/quote]

I dislike these examples, b/c the vast majority of college dropouts aren't going to be Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Also, both those men dropped out of Harvard. They had to have the qualifications to get into Harvard in the first place. Not most college dropouts. [/quote]

exactly. nearly everyone i know with an entrepreneurial spirit has done largely fine, but those w/o (look, I don't have it and is part of the reason why i went to college) have generally struggled.[b] Knew a lot of guys who graduate HS and had a job on a Big 3 auto assembly line. Nearly all of them lost those jobs due to downsizing within ten years of HS graduation. And many of them have been flailing around for the next thirty years[/b].[/quote]

+1  When the Big 3 line was going it was really going, and those guys were making BANK.  I went to Michigan State.  Two of my roommates had boyfriends who worked for one of the Big 3 and those guys were making money hand over fist.  They looked like a sure thing and my roommates were thrilled to have such great catches.  Ten to fifteen years later, when the auto industry tanked, the guys couldn't / wouldn't flex enough to change industries.  They're still flailing (love that word cuz it is a perfect description) around now thirty years later.

OTH my husband and I have a best friend who dropped out of college because it just wasn't working for him.  He moved around between all sorts of jobs for maybe five or six years before hooking up with us in our business renovating houses.  He worked for us for a while and eventually moved into real estate.  He now owns a real estate company, and he and his husband have a thriving business.

It is hard without a degree, though.  It gets your foot in the door for a lot of things.  My real estate friend would be the first to tell you to get a degree.  You don't have to love the process of school - too many people think "oh, I don't love it so I'll stop..." - but do it for the piece of paper so the door opens for you just a crack.[/quote]

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