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Main Content
The Art of Dropping Out
College drop outs who go on to do great things in the world of business demonstrate the true value of a university education
As graduate unemployment has peaked in Europe in recent years, this question has been debated with ever increasing aggression. Most equate a good degree with getting a good job at the end of it but the debate has also been pervaded with lofty ideals of education for education’s sake and learning how to enlighten oneself about a variety of subjects.
Whatever the answer to the philosophical debate, the British government has attempted to solve the conundrum in more quantitative terms – from September next year, it plans to charge all undergraduate students from the European Union some £9,000 a year to gain a tertiary education, to the chagrin of British citizens who will be paying the same rate.
Anyone to happened to stumble upon such an eye-watering figure would of course feel sure that degrees must be a real asset, given their cost and it is true that quality of life indexes – tables listing the very best places in the world to live – usually include provisions to take in to account how many graduates reside there.
Yet, as all voters instinctively know, government policies can be deceiving. Whilst most trumpet the value of a university education and charge their young people for the privilege they also harp on about how, in a globalised marketplace, it is essential for a country to have ‘wealth generators.’
These two policies may not necessarily square with each other, given that the list of such people who have dropped out of university is both long and distinguished.
Mark Zuckerberg is known for having left Harvard to develop Facebook, Bill Gates in order to create Microsoft and Steve Jobs barely attended any classes of his college classes before leaving and coming up with the idea for Apple.
The common theme for these three during their formative years – aside from an abnormal interest in information technology – was that none of them thought that university was a worthwhile place to hone their computing wizardry.
Given that all of them are not only entrepreneurs but creators of ideas, this should pose some serious questions for the world’s higher education sector. After all – what are universities if not places designed to foster and nurture new ideas?
Of course, in these cases universities can at least plead mitigating circumstances. Computing was not seriously considered as an area of study by academics until the 1970s and even since then, the fast-paced and ever evolving genre has been better adapted to developing online than in dusty libraries.
But in other sectors too, tertiary education has been firmly rejected by those who have later gone on to achieve success. Virgin founder Richard Branson comprehensively failed most exams he sat whilst at school and former British Prime Minister Sir John Major, unusually for a statesman, had very little formal education.
Young, unemployed graduates of today may be tempted to ask themselves why they bothered – doing ones own thing surely seems a much better bet to get on in this world, whatever your subject.
Fortunately for universities, however, the successes of such people need not spell their death knell, although it probably should shock them back to life.
It is telling that whilst Zuckerberg, Gates and Jobs all dropped out of university, none would have gone on to achieve what they did were it not for their experiences there. Mark Zuckerberg’s whole Facebook concept was based on improving on his campus networking techniques and Bill Gates met his future business partner at Harvard. Steve Jobs, for his part, did not necessarily have a road to Damascus moment during his studies, but guilt over the amount of money his adoptive parents were investing in his classes motivated him to leave and seek out something better.
Indeed, this information should naturally lead to the conclusion that reform rather than redundancy would be the best policy for higher education institutions. A few easy changes would set them on the road to success again, and would hopefully make sure that they did not miss a fourth computer geek cum genius.
First of all, undergraduates should be allowed to innovate much more with their ideas during their studies. It may be difficult for those paying the bills to accept, but students not turning up to any lectures – as was commonplace in the past – can actually benefit individual and institution alike, allowing students to nurture their ideas and universities to find out if they have the next wunderkind enrolled.
Certainly, this would be a hard sell – most would take the opportunity of no registration to go out on hedonistic binges, but for a small few it might prove fruitful.
Secondly, universities must consider in what areas their true expertise lie rather than trying to accommodate everyone’s talents. If an institution with the prestige and financial endowment of Harvard is able to let two geniuses to slip through the net in less than a generation, what is the point in teaching IT? Surely it is far better to focus on traditional academic subjects, ones where they have always excelled and always will do.
Finally, awards such as scholarships should not only be given at the point of entry, but rather held back to recognise the achievements of members of the student body during their studies. Imagine how much more difficult it would have been for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – and particularly for Steve Jobs – to leave the university system if their continued participation had been incentivised with monetary gifts. Facebook, Microsoft and Apple might have been even better than they are now (although it is difficult for lowly, awestruck writers to think exactly how this would have been the case).
Whatever reforms are made, it is clear that tinkering with the university system will be a must in the 21st century if institutions want to remain relevant. Having students leave to set up multi-billion dollar companies simply won’t do, particularly if they are in the ‘future industries’ valued so highly by governments. Otherwise, it might be the universities themselves whose influence begins to drop.