A blogger who is no stranger to controversy once blogged about how useless a college education is and how someone can get ahead in this world without it and then went on to spout how many of the top richest people in the world do not have degrees. This to him was case enough that a university education isn’t a necessary tool for success in the world today.
If there is one thing about which we both agree, it is that a
university education is not a pre-requisite for or a guarantee of
success in today’s world - but, and this is a big but, it is a useful
tool for success in today’s world. Before I embark on this discussion
let me let it known that by college education, I am also including 1-2
year certifications and associated degrees; basically anything you have
to sit down in a class to learn.
Let us look at one of the major foundations for this young man’s
argument. He points out members of the Fortune 100. What I shall do is
take a look at a few of the top 10 in no particular order and see how
his argument falls flat when you examine them and how they achieved
their fortunes.
Bill Gates
is one of the best known college drop-outs of all time- masthead for
the college-is-unnecessary movement. First and foremost, Gates comes
from a wealthy family, his father was a prominent lawyer and his mother
was also an achiever in addition to her birth into a wealthy family. So
Bill was already well connected at birth. In addition he was a prodigy:
by his early teens he was writing source code. He did not finish
college but when he decided to start his own software company with Paul
Allen, his parents supported him morally and financially. They rest, as
we know, is history.
Carlos Slim Helú
the telecommunications magnate who surpassed Bill Gates who studied
engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. While his
engineering degree did not necessarily contribute to his
telecommunications holdings, I am sure it had influenced his career.
Lakshmi Mittal
is often ranked 4th richest in the world. Mittal not only inherited the
Mittal steel business from his father, but he also graduated from St.
Xavier's College in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.
Anil Ambani
, the sixth richest man in the world runs the Reliance group of
companies founded by his father. Ambani holds a Bachelor of Science
degree from the University of Mumbai and an MBA degree from The Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mukesh Ambani,
the fifth richest man in the worldis Anil's brother and runs the
petrochemical branch of Reliance Industries. Has an undergraduate
degree from the University of Bombay, Bachelor of Chemical Engineering
and a graduate degree from Stanford University, Master of Business
Administration. Not only did he gather an education in what he focused
in, he went on to get a Master’s degree so that he could run the
business branch of his business.
The founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, is one of the few the list who did not bother to step into college. He started IKEA with money from his father.
The world's biggest real estate magnate, KP Singh, comes from a family of successful landlords and lawyers and is a Science graduate from Meerut College in India.
Oleg Deripaska
who owns Basic Element investment firm which is active in the Energy
and metals sector is the ninth richest man in the world and has a
degree in physics and another in economics.
Karl Albrecht
– Took his mother’s store and slowly turned it into the Aldi group of
stores making him the richest man in Germany. There is little known
about him so no record of college or not.
Warren Buffet
who should have been at the top of the list is self-made for the most
part, however, in 1950 he enrolled in Columbia Business School to study
under his mentor Benjamin Graham.
In summary, two of the world's richest men did not go to college, while
two others did not graduate from college. The two that dropped out of
college are older than sixty years, I shall address this later. So 25%
of the 10 richest men in the world never went to college nor did they
get a formal education - not winning odds if you ask me. Additionally,
a large number of these men found businesses ready for them to run.
What they did was either take a place in the business, or go to
university and then take their place in the family business. We only
have 3 individuals of whom it might be said that they started from
scratch or close to it; those are odds of 30%. Once again, odds one
would not want to wager on.
Of course this does not mean that one cannot successed without a formal
education. However, it is not as easy it was in the 50's and the 60's
where an eager young man could set out in the streets and find a mentor
who would take him under their wing, give them a place in their
business and teach them all the tools of the trade and eventually
release them to start their own successful business. We live in a
global environment where certain skills sets and knowledge are expected
in the employment sector, manifesting itself in degrees and different
certifications.
Could you fresh out of high school start a business and succeed to
great riches? Realistically, franchises and other big business have
made the market a treacherous battle field for the small scale
entrepreneur. If you are in a country like Kenya, with bureaucracy,
corruption, inflation and insecurity, a business start-up has an uphill
task to financial freedom.
On
the other hand, a formal education is not necessarily foolproof, but it
is without a doubt a good security to have. Our parents' generation and
earlier had a better chance at success without being formally educated.
It was not unusual for someone to work for the same company for over 20
years and receive perks and raises commensurate with the time spent at
the company. A volatile economy and globalization have made job
security a thing of the past.
A formal education, and other skills, allows one to be a step
ahead of the game. When I graduated from college, I could have started
my own non-profit sector as I had no capital and little hands-on
experience to launch , afterall, this is what I studied in school.
Instead, I choose to work in the non-profit sector to gain experience
as I raise capital. I probably would have been able to start a
non-profit without a college education, but with a very steep learning
curve. And I certainly would not be holding the position I have at the
organization without a college degree.
A good formal education offers a leg up in many ways. As the world
becomes an even smaller village, the standards for efficiency and
experiences and skills validation mirror each other in different parts
of the world. Save for ambition, very few people can self-educate
themselves. The best solution is, if you can afford to, to find a good
institution that will teach what you need to know in a structured way.
The world remembers only winners, so the lucky few who made it to the
top with no education at all shall be feted and talked about, but those
who failed without an education when they had nothing to fall on after
their dreams crashed and burned far outnumber those who made it and are
never remembered. It might sound conformist, but there is no doubt that
a good education is worth a bird in the hand, a dream without any
education or means is worth 2 birds in the bush; still probable but far
harder to catch.
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Fortunately I can agree with you and hold on to my initial point, " I wanted to know that education is not the quintessential principle to material and life success as I was taught in my pre-tertiary education."
To be honest had I known about those 25% earlier, or people like Cameron Johnson or folks like Dan Kennedy or Jay Abraham I would have gone in to business for myself a long time ago rather than respond to the fear that without an education I am a nobody and will forever be a nobody.
Fortunately in my experience we have a variable that we can test. Whereas we will take majority of my peers as the control, I shall be in the experimental group where I shall attempt to carve out schools of thought of my own as opposed to accepting pre-carved schools of thoughts. Might be a seratonin imbalance somewhere in my brain but that's what I personally believe I was put on this Earth to do. Fortunately other folks have done it before, so I have exemplars to model on how to do it again. Anyway I am rambling.........
I was told someone had rebutted my post on education and had to stop by to say hello.