The paradoxical but indisputable value of higher education

Harvard University is without doubt a venerable institution of higher education with a rich heritage. Ironically, it seems to be no less famous for the high-profile and highly successful entrepreneurs who have dropped out over the years.

In the 1970s, Bill Gates dropped out to found Microsoft. Two decades later, Elon Musk did the same, only faster – after just two days of classes – to found his first company, Zip2 Corporation. Almost another decade passed before Mark Zuckerberg left the world-class university to finish off launching what as to become the world’s most popular social network, Facebook. At around the same time, Elizabeth Holmes, now America’s youngest self-made female billionaire, dropped out to found her “revolutionary” blood-testing company, Theranos.

Indeed the list of university or college dropouts – not just from Harvard – who eventually turned out to be highly successful is much longer than most people expect, including such notables as Michael Dell (Dell’s founder), Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple), Evan Williams (Twitter’s co-founder), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Jan Koum (Whatsapp co-founder), and Travis Kalanick (co-founder of Uber).

Nor are the businesses of these successful dropouts restricted to the tech-world. Tycoon Li Ka-shing, whose commercial empire spans a wide range of industries, dropped out of high school. John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, dropped out of college with his girlfriend, borrowed US$10,000 – and raised US$35,000 more – to start SaferWay. Richard Branson, the flamboyant Virgin founder, dropped out at the age of 16 to start a youth-culture magazine called Student.

These entrepreneurial titans are living proof that receiving formal higher education is no prerequisite to learning and winning in life, which, ironically, may also seem to make a mockery of all those MBA graduates who paid a fortune for their supposedly superior qualification.

However, while their feats of enterprise and wealth creation are admirable, worshipping these winning dropouts should not be confused with glorifying their decision to drop out of school. If anything, giving up on education and winning big time in life is the exception rather than the rule. Statistics on how much more university graduates earn than those with only a high school education when both groups are several years into their careers, are readily available. For example, in the US the discrepancy is an average of US$20,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.