Everyone has probably been told by their parents that if they want a
successful and lucrative career then they must go to and graduate from
college or university. For most, this does seem to be a truthful
statement but there are many people out there who prove this very theory
wrong in the most spectacular ways. Here we take a look at the most
successful and the most wealthy college dropouts ever. Who says you need
a college education to succeed? these guys and gals prove no one does.
Tiger Woods. In a world where prodigious sports talents tend to forgo
higher education altogether for the pros, Tiger Woods chose to continue
playing amateur golf at Stanford University as an economics major.
Perhaps it was in Econ 101 that he learned the term "opportunity cost,"
because his time at Stanford was not long. After two years there, Woods
turned pro with his "Hello world" announcement, officially ending his
collegiate career. He would go on to become one of the highest paid
athletes in the world, earning more than $100 million annually at the
height of his career. How's that for economics?
Before she was a Gaga, she was a Germanotta. Born Stefani Joanne
Angelina Germanotta, the artist better known as Lady Gaga attended New
York University's Tisch School of the Arts, but dropped out after just a
year to pursue her music career full time. She broke onto the New York
club scene with her burlesque performances and was signed to Interscope
Records by the age of 20. Her 2008 debut album, The Fame, has had the
world going gaga for Gaga ever since.
Apparently a college degree isn't a prerequisite for flying the
Millennium Falcon. Harrison Ford, of Star Wars and Indiana Jones fame,
majored in philosophy at Ripon College, but dropped out shortly before
graduation. He subsequently landed several small parts in Hollywood
productions, but unhappy with such minor roles, turned to a career in
professional carpentry instead. Almost ten years later, he would co-star
in George Lucas' 1973 graduation night comedy American Graffiti and
subsequently joined Lucas in a galaxy far, far away in the 1977
blockbuster Star Wars.
TIME has called Tom Hanks
America's chronicler in chief; Sacramento State can call him their most
famous dropout. The storied actor left college to intern full time at
the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. There, he learned
various aspects of theater from lighting to set design, laying the
foundation for his Hollywood career as movie star, producer, director
and writer. Not one to forget his own past, in 2009 Hanks helped
fund-raise money to help renovate the Cleveland theater where he got his
start.
Most college students use their dorm rooms to sleep, study, or do things
their parents probably don't want to know about. Mark Zuckerberg
founded Facebook in his. Originally meant only for Harvard students, the
popular social networking site quickly spread to the rest of the Ivies
and other colleges across the nation. As Facebook's popularity exploded,
Zuckerberg packed up his bags and relocated the fledgling company to
Palo Alto, California, forever leaving behind Harvard's hallowed halls.
So far, the decision has worked out pretty well for the
twenty-something. According to Forbes, Zuckerberg is the youngest
billionaire in the world, with a 2010 net worth of $4 billion.
The Academy Award-winning director followed a circuitous route to
Hollywood. Born and raised in Canada, he and his family moved to Brea,
California in 1971. It was there that the young Cameron enrolled in
Fullerton College to study physics. His academic life did not last long.
He would drop out, marry a waitress and eventually become a truck
driver for the local school district. It was not until he saw Star Wars
in 1977 that Cameron would trade his blue collar career for one creating
some of the late 20th-century's most stunning (and expensive)
science-fiction movies.
Buckminster Fuller — architect, thinker, inventor, futurist, college
dropout. Expelled from Harvard not once, but twice, Fuller's
post-dropout period was anything but successful. He suffered a string of
bad business ventures and years of anguish following his daughter's
death. While Fuller could have settled for a less than extraordinary
life — he even contemplated suicide — he refused to buck to the bevy of
bad breaks. At the age of 32, Fuller set out on a one man quest to
change the world for the better. His unorthodox ideas such as the
dymaxion (a portmanteau of dynamic maximum tension) house and dymaxion
car captivated the nation, while his iconic geodesic domes would bring
him international fame and recognition.
America's most celebrated
architect spent more time designing colleges than attending them. Frank
Lloyd Wright was admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
1886, but left after only one year. He would move to Chicago and
eventually apprentice under Louis Sullivan, the "father of modernism."
By the time of his passing, Wright's resume included more than 500
works, most famous of which are Fallingwater and New York City's Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum.
The Mac, the iPod, heck, even Buzz
Lightyear probably wouldn't have existed had Steve Jobs stayed in
school. The future wizard of One Infinite Loop dropped out of Reed
College after just six months because of the undue financial strain it
placed on his working-class parents' savings. He would go on to
eventually found Apple, NeXT Computer and Pixar, becoming an
instrumental force in shaping the landscape of modern culture. However,
his brief tenure in academia was not for naught. In a 2005 commencement
speech he gave at Stanford University, Jobs credited a calligraphy class
he took at Reed College with forming the basis for the typography used
in the first Macintosh computer.
The Harvard Crimson called him "Harvard's most successful dropout" — the
rest of the world just calls him ridiculously rich. For more than a
decade, Bill Gates has been one of the wealthiest, if not the
wealthiest, men in the world. The son of an attorney and a
schoolteacher, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973, only to drop
out two years later to found Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen.
In 2007, more than thirty years after he left Harvard, the co-founder
of Microsoft would finally receive his degree (an honorary doctorate)
from his alma mater. At the commencement, Gates said, "I'm a bad
influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I
had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today."
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