Qualifications != wealth

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The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is more than double that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if you factor out the world's third richest man, Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $60 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, as compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. And what is true for billionaires holds equally for the garden-variety rich: According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Reaseach, a full 20% of America's millionaires never even set foot in college.

List of college-dropout billionaires

• Cameron James Gill
  
• Bill Gates
  
• Mark Zuckerberg
  
• Lawrence Ellison
  
• Eike Batista
  
• Steve Jobs
  
• Michael Dell
  
• Marc Rich
  
• Ty Warner
  
• Gautam Adani
  
• Mukesh Jagtiani
  
• Azim Premji
  
• Subhash Chandra
  
• Roman Abramovich
  
• Oleg Deripaska
  
• Li Ka-shing
  
• Sheldon Adelson
  
• Amancio Ortega
  
• Carl Icahn
  
• Kirk Kerkorian
  
• Donald Newhouse
  
• François Pinault
  
• Jack Taylor
  
• YC Wang
  
• Joaquín Guzmán Loera
  
• Dawood Ibrahim
  
• Hasan Ali Khan
  
• David Geffen
  
• David Murdock
  
• Dean Kamen
  
• Ted Turner
  
• Henry Fok
  
• Ralph Lauren
  
• Micky Arison

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... llionaires

Not at all surprising.

Entrepreneurship is not something you can learn in a classroom. It's largely a gift and can only be "learned" from another accomplished entrepreneur.

The only reason college graduates even make the "millionaire" club is because so many of them are in occupations that pay/paid very well and allowed them to accumulate earnings until they made it in the door.

The overwhelming majority of college graduates would be lucky to be "upper middle class" at best.

Very true!

I am all in favor of entrepreneurism. However, the failure rate for new businesses is approximately 80%. And that needs to be said at the outset. And the biggest reason is undercapitalization.

I am in favor of both college and entrepreneurship. In fact, I'm in favor of getting as many positives going as possible, and that way you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

With college, if you prestudy, the whole thing is much more on your terms, and you can easily easily take three days off at your own choosing (well almost, maybe one class where the professor lectures particularly well). But you can majorly phase back at a time and manner of your own choosing. And then you can increase the throttle again, also in a time and manner of your own choosing.

And with skills such as: 'I'm trying to get a head start for next semester. May I sit in on a couple of classes?', you can scout out which professors you better connect with.


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And actually, I'm in favor of college, job, and starting a business, if you can swing it. Multiple positives going at one time.

Or, maybe a job and maybe starting a business on the side, and maybe the business isn't so capital-intensive, but it's more about your expertise and/or your sweat equity. Now, if you're starting to make more per hour in your business than your job, that's excellent news. You still want to make smart decisions. Is your business somewhat seasonal? Is it dependent on one or two main clients?

Feel and texture. There's no kinds of perfect answers. Trust and develop your gut. Go in medium steps with what feels right to you, get the feedback from that medium step, and adjust it from there.

Perhaps, but most business ventures require a massive investment of time and effort on the part of the person creating it. Splitting your efforts isn't always a good idea.

No matter what you say, the facts outlined in the OP still stand.

my father left school when he was 13 because his father died and his mother was poor and she had 8 kids.
he got an apprenticeship as a carpenter. then when he was 17, he enlisted to go to war, and ge did 2 tours (middle east and new guinea).

when he got back in 1945, he married my mother and he toiled away doing jobs where he pushed his wheel barrow all the way to the places he worked (before he bought a ute).

anyway, over the years he became a licensed builder, and then a master builder (licenced to build up to 20 storey buildings), and then he became a property developer.

i was adopted when he was 53, and when i was 10 (dad=63), he bought enough land in st ives ( a suburb of sydney) to build 35 houses on, and he controlled his business that completed the houses.

he owned 4 blocks of flats and 6 houses and a farm and 40,000 acres of land in outback new south wales at his height. (he is still alive but he has mild dementia now and my sister got to be his guardian and sold most of what he owned and i do not know where the money went yet).

he had a friend who was a lawyer who was very eloquent, but dad always had much more money than his lawyer friend. the lawyer had 2 houses.

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my situation is that i was expelled over and over again from every mainstream school i went to (i was in psychiatric units for a large part of my school life, and i was not expelled from them, but i was only allowed to stay for a set period).

i did not get a tertiary education (obviously by the way i talk), and i got a computer when i was 14 and i taught myself how to program. i met a man who was a systems analyst for IBM, and he was doing a job for a company, and he thought i would be ideal for a position that that company was advertising. the position was as a software support/maintenance person.

the company had 1 programmer that was a freelance programmer, and he wrote all the code for that company. he was a bit sloppy and he got his money for his programs and disappeared.

when problems began to arise, the manager asked me if i could look into them, and i learned the language that the programs were written in, and i solved the problems.

they were happy with me, and so they elevated me to head programmer. my pay skyrocketed, and before long, they were asking me to think of new ways to present their data, and program my ideas, and i did so and they sold my programs to their clients and my pay went up even further.

i was able to buy a house after 6 years , and i worked there for 11 years,
the company was given supermarket scan data from all major supermarket chains in return for a percentage of the revenue we could generate from reports sold to manufacturers that compared their performance against their competitors. i analyzed their sales strategies and pricing points, and provided information as to the areas that were lucrative, as well as information concerning the effects of promotions, and my reports also suggested improvements to their strategies of marketing.

the company had to close because new government legislation ruled that the revelation of information to manufacturers concerning their competitors sales strategies was unlawful.

a company that was our client was using me as a problem solver (unbeknown to the company i worked for), and they happily employed me after the company i worked for closed.

i worked from home for that company (countrywide) for 6 years by processing their data with systems i wrote, and i was able to buy another house after 3 years.

then, in january this year, the company (cwide) was sold to an american consortium who felt that my fees were exorbitant, and they had been approached by a company in india who offered to replicate my services for a very small fee. they released me from my contract.

as well as this, the government resumed my second house because there was a planned road that was going to go through that land.

i freaked out, and i rang around for jobs and i was unsuccessful in all circumstances because i can not sell myself because i have limited communication skills.

i saw a business for sale for an owner driver delivering chips, and i rang the person and he said "do you own a truck?". i said i did not but i would get a truck tomorrow if that was all i need to be considered for the partnership.

he decided to give me a chance, and i got a truck and he supplies potato products and he wants to sell me as many chips as i can sell because that is how he makes money.

i then drove a bloody stinking truck for a few months delivering chips and peeled potatoes for 3 days per week ($650 profit per day) and in my travels, i found that there was alot of other shops (fish and chip shops) that would like to buy chips from me, but i am not prepared to work my backside off so i declined, however i wrote their names down.

now i have 20 more shops who would be prepared to buy chips from me, and i am going to buy another truck and hire a driver for $200 per day to service those shops.

in the process of delivering peeled potatoes, i got a very good idea.
i currently buy a 10kg bag of peeled potatoes for $11 from the guy who sold me the business, and i sell them for $16.

i recently got a lead from the biggest seafood distributor in sydney who said if i could sell him bags of peeled potatoes for $13, then he would buy them only from me.

i then struck a deal with 2 growers that means if i promise to always buy their potatoes for 18 cents per KG, then they will reserve their stock for me to buy.

they can provide about 2 semi trailers per week of potatoes each, and i am going to invest in a potato peeling production line in a cooled warehouse.

the seafood distributor has about 40 shops and he also sells to prisons and hospitals and restaurants, so he will need about 5000 kg of peeled potatoes each week. i need about 4-6 new drivers and trucks to deliver the stock, but it is seemingly a very profitable idea. then i can stay at home and guide the situation like i did up until january this year.


my friend who is still at university studying statistics (at 35) is struggling to pay his rent, and he sees me as a dullard, but after we retire, i will be the happier one. i always give him money to ficx his car and pay his bills.


i do not think he will ever be able to retire.

Wow, that's very interesting b9, thanks for sharing

The business world does not reward education, and often it is apathetic to intelligence as well. How well-connected you are is a more significant concern if you want to be obscenely wealthy, rather than just reasonably well-off.

And the overwhelming majority of uneducated people would be lucky to be lower middle class.

Or have about this, a venture capitalist invests in 20 different dot.coms, betting that one or two will pop.

b9, I compliment you on your entrepreneurial spirit. I would simply recommend this: just like when a police detective gets a hunch on who the guilty person is, he or she should ask one or two additional questions ('if that's true, than . . .), an idea on a profitable business opportunity, one or two extra questions. (And it needed be long and laborious. We might be talking just a couple of hours.

I'd also recommend what I call the "poker pause."

ex: 'I need to make a couple of calls first.'

That kind of thing, and you might be able to come up with better examples.

i do not understand what you are saying.
are you saying i will be conned?
are you saying i am plunging blindly into a large investment based on unconfirmed verbal promises?
i am still looking at all the things that may go wrong, and i will not be investing for at least 6 months until i can confirm that there will be steady and reliable demand for the peeled potatoes.
i will also be co-investing with the fellow that sold me the run, and he has been in the business for years.

one question i need to sort out is why he does not invest fully himself in the idea if it is going to be so profitable.
the equipment i need to buy will cost about $200,000 and i will invest half of that if it all checks out.
i do not think he would invest that amount as well if he is somehow lying about the viability of it.

the rent for the warehouse would also have to be shared to a degree by me. he already has the warehouse, and he sells his products to about 12 other drivers who are paid a salary by him. i am the only one who owns my run, so i make more than the other drivers by far.
since he uses the warehouse (cold storage facility) for more than just the possible future operation of the production line, he would pay much more than 1/2 the rent and electricity.

anyway, i do not want to go into agonizing detail because there is so much to explain, and this thread was not about my personal activities, but about whether qualifications and degrees are necessary to make good money.