April 30th, 2020 | Updated on March 5th, 2024
It is also possible to start a large profitable business without a diploma of higher education. And sometimes there is a diploma, but it’s not useful at all.
Sometimes it’s not a problem at all. These are the statements of people who believe that higher education is greatly overrated.
1. Warren Buffett
“The best education you can get is to invest in yourself. But this isn’t about college or university.” — Warren Buffett
In 2010, Warren Buffett gave $37 billion to five charities, making him the biggest benefactor in human history.
That didn’t stop him from taking second place in Forbes’s ranking of the world’s wealthiest people in 2017.
Just like Peter Thiel, Warren Buffett didn’t drop out of university, but he doesn’t think everybody needs higher education.
At a meeting with American students in response to a question about a bubble of educational loans (in America, a large share of loans falls on education), the investor said that he does not even know where his diplomas are – they have never come in handy.
The only worthwhile investment, he calls the public speaking course he took at Dale Carnegie’s for $100.
What’s more, none of Warren Buffett’s three kids have a college degree. Investor says, “You have to ask yourself all the time: “Does it have any value to me?” Personally, I went to university to live up to my parents’ expectations.”. If it does for you, you can easily get a PhD degree online.
2. Larry Allison
“A good education is a business advantage, but not a guarantee of success.” — Larry Allison
At nine months, Larry Allison got pneumonia, and then his birth mother wanted to give the child to relatives, deciding that she could not take good care of him.
From that moment Larry Allison began to live in a foster home, graduated from school and even entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But after two years of study, he had to leave the university because his foster mother died.
Larry Ellison tried his second degree at the University of Chicago, but he studied there only a semester and decided to move to California to build a career.
Before starting his company, he managed to work even for the CIA (and no one there was confused by the lack of a diploma).
And then Larry Ellison built Oracle, the second-largest software corporation after Microsoft. Today it employs about 120,000 people in 145 countries.
3. Steve Jobs
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do in my life, and I didn’t know how the university would help me realize it.” — Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs thought the decision to drop out of college was one of the best in his life.
He shared his position with Stanford alumni. During an inspirational speech, the billionaire told three stories. The first one was about education.
Steve Jobs didn’t know what he wanted to do, and the university didn’t help him understand it.
However, some subjects, such as calligraphy, still aroused his interest, and he went to creative classes with the permission of the dean’s office one year after his graduation.
Ten years later, the knowledge gained was used in computer development. That’s how different headsets and proportional fonts came into being.
“It made me feel bad back then, but now looking back, I realize it was one of the best decisions I ever made,” said Steve Jobs in his speech to Stanford students.
At first, it was difficult. The future billionaire slept on the floor of his friends’ dormitory, handed in bottles.
But the decision not to get a higher education was crucial for him. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you’ll have to trust the dots you’ll somehow connect in the future. You’ll have to rely on something: your character, your destiny, your life, your karma – anything,” said Steve Jobs.
