
Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School - woan
http://wadhwa.com/2010/10/02/students-you-are-probably-not-mark-zuckerberg-so-stay-in-school/
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gamble
One commonality between many successful dropouts like Zuckerberg and Gates is
that they dropped out to do something specific, not because they were too lazy
or undisciplined to finish. Had the right opportunity not come along, I
suspect many celebrity dropouts would have cruised to graduation.

~~~
kithal
In fact, I'd imagine Zuckerberg would be better off both personally and
professionally had he finished his undergraduate education.

Moreover, I think it's interesting to think if Facebook would be different had
it been founded by post-graduation Zuckerberg. Better? Worse? I bet the
Facebook experience would be richer had Zuckerberg been more mature when he
crafted the initial vision.

~~~
jaxn
That is a pretty bold claim. It sounds ridiculous to me.

Also, how can someone consumed with an idea finish school? It is that singular
purpose that drive Zuckerberg to succeed. You can't just put that on hold and
finish up a degree.

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pg
It's a fallacy that one should avoid ambitious choices because few succeed at
them. On average the odds of starting a successful startup are low, but the
reason that's so is that it's an average of a few people for whom the
probability of success is high (not 100%, but still high considering the
risks) and a large number for whom it's practically zero.

I suppose in a sense he's doing students a favor with this article, because
the ones who don't perceive the fallacy are probably the ones with a low
chance of succeeding.

~~~
jacques_chester
It is also a fallacy that one should make ambitious choices _because_ some
well-known few have succeeded.

In either case you are making a decision out of emotion (fear or hope).

edit: better noun.

~~~
AJ007
Exclude the "well known few" from the list of successful entrepreneurs and you
still have a list of people that is quite large.

I am very fortunate I did not listen to anyone who told me their opinion when
I was preparing to drop out of college some 5 years ago. As difficult as it
was to do back then, the choices I have to make to run my company and keep my
employees employed make that one decision appear pathetically simple and
obvious.

Being an entrepreneur is about making decisions for yourself because no one
else can tell you what to do (and once you become successful everyone will
have an their opinions of what you should do.)

If you are incapable about making challenging decisions to run your own life
you are not going to be a successful entrepreneur and you should listen to
what other people tell you.

~~~
jacques_chester
I was not aware that weighing up advice, and sometimes taking it, was an
inability to make challenging decisions.

I am glad you were successful, however your experience remains only anecdotal.
I have one too: my father did not go to university, worked hard at his trade,
started a business, and went bankrupt.

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icandoitbetter
Students: You are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so pay $200,000 to put up with
old-fashioned syllabi and badly-designed courses employing poor methods of
evaluation and professors who do their best to make feel as mediocre as
possible!

~~~
fleitz
Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get
tenure.

If this guy was an econ professor at least he would know he was just talking
his book. You don't need a symposium on entrepreneurship you need to sell
stuff at a higher price than you bought it to paying customers. Thats it, it's
a sentence not a 2 year degree program.

~~~
tensor
_Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get
tenure._

This is an extremely ignorant and insulting statement. Further, you have just
asserted that the worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures, are
all incapable fools. I hope you realize how this statement makes you look.

~~~
fleitz
I would posit that "worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures"
are revered for what they did and not what they taught, nor their positions of
tenure.

Did Einstein have tenure or a teaching position when he discovered relativity?
Point out to me those revered figures of history known primarily for their
teaching or tenure positions. The worthlessness of the university system is
exemplified by people like the Admissions Dean of MIT who was able to perform
magnificently at her job sans the appropriate degree. The degree obviously
being so unimportant to MIT to even bother checking that she had it for some
30 odd years.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html>

The statement is insulting only to those who hold their degree / teaching
position as part of their identity which is supposed to be some kind of proxy
for them knowing / being able to do something.

I greatly respect the capable, the intelligent, and the driven, what I don't
think is that having a teaching position / tenure is a great proxy for knowing
that.

~~~
tensor
You do realize that you cannot get tenure without publishing many, many,
relevant pieces of work, right? You also realize that to teach something you
need to really understand it, correct? On the other hand, you can certainly
apply knowledge without understanding it.

Your statement is insulting to anyone who values knowledge, teaching it, and
pursuing it. Perhaps you are not a native english speaker, but your statement
is very easy to read as implying that only those who cannot do [what?
research? engineering?] teach, and only those who are lousy teachers get
tenure.

It is an indefensible position and your obvious hostility towards modern
academia is unjustified. For one academics don't necessarily want to teach.
But as a society we deemed that we will in essence force them to. Why? We need
good teachers and goodness knows industry won't waste money on it, let alone
have any sort of quality control. So we force these people who have devoted
their lives to research to also teach.

As for tenure, it is often attacked as something protecting poor researchers.
I think this notion is very much overblown. In modern times you cannot even
get tenure before you are 35 or 40. If you look at those with tenure, the
majority continue to do good work for the remainder of their careers. That
aside, the main purpose of tenure is actually to protect the pursuit of
knowledge. It exists to prevent management from dictating what people may
research. It is to allow researchers to pursue risky or unpopular approaches.

Academics do what they do because they primarily enjoy research. Insinuating
that they are incapable of doing this simply because they also teach and are
granted the protection of tenure is very insulting.

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ziadbc
This is a false dichotomy that sidesteps the question, "Are universities a
place where the brightest students, regardless of which campus they are
attending, are able to actualize real world goals?"

In many cases, for a person who has real conviction and skill about what it is
they do, dropping out is merely the path of least resistance.

For the 'regulars,' the ideal should be for universities to offer the
resources to students who are passionate about their field, and not saddle
them with administrative barriers in the name of 'getting a degree.'

------
imran
Students you are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so find yourself who you are!
(then decide about school)

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nhangen
I disagree with this entirely.

1\. Stop comparing yourself and/or others to Mark Zuckerberg...it's an insult
to both parties.

2\. School is useful for connections and work ethic, but if you need neither,
than there's no reason to cling to the dying ideal that school = security.

3\. Any skilled hacker can find enough freelance jobs to support himself (or
herself) while he builds a side project.

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rvb
For what it's worth, I dropped out of college, ended up starting a company,
and had a decent exit (fortunately). But I'm using the freedom that gave me to
go back to school.

I was able to manage before by teaching myself out of books, but there's
something to be said for learning with expert guidance and a community of
peers.

I am also gaining exposure to a variety of fields which lend themselves less
well to self-instruction than programming does (for example, molecular
biology) and in which I believe a lot of the action for the next fifty years
will be happening.

So, yeah, unless you already have a product that has traction and that demands
your fulltime attention to continue growing, there's no reason to drop out of
school.

My advice to students is: imagine that you were forced to drop out of college
against your will, and then were given a chance to go back five years later
after slogging it out in the real world. Would your attitude be different than
it is now? Would you perhaps go to more office hours, skip less class, explore
more subjects, play less Xbox, join more clubs?

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risico
I find that having the "guts" to leave the school to pursue a personal goal is
more important than staying in and wait for thinks to happen.

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keen
I resent this kind of thinking.

"students may come up with great ideas and start a company, but they aren’t
going to be able make it big unless they have the educational foundation."

College isn't the only way to get this educational foundation. I'd rather
learn through trying to succeed in business, even if it means failure at
first.

------
IsaacL
"To build a business, you need to understand subjects like finance, marketing,
intellectual property and corporate law. "

And you can only learn these topics in university.

"Most importantly, if students don’t learn the importance of finishing what
they start, they will never achieve success—this requires perseverance and
determination."

And you can only learn perseverance at university.

"And by dropping out of college, they won’t have the alumni networks that they
need to help them later in their careers and in business."

And you can only make friends at university.

To me, the only real reason to stay in university until I graduate (aside from
inertia) is the belief that being a dropout instead of a graduate will hurt my
future career. (I speak as one who's been tempted to drop out a few times)

------
kevin_morrill
The list of business titans who either never attended or dropped out of
college is so long it makes you wonder if graduating from college is actually
a liability.

Paul Allen, Richard Branson, James Cameron, John Carmack, Andrew Carnegie,
Michael Dell, Barry Diller, Walt Disney, George, Eastman, Thomas Edison, Larry
Ellison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, David Geffen, J. Paul Getty, William Randolph
Hearst, Steve Jobs, Ingvar Kamprad, Kirk Kerkorian, Ray Kroc, Ralph Lauren,
Craig McCaw, John D. Rockefeller, Steven Spielberg, Dave Thomas, Ted Turner,
Ted Waitt, Steve Wozniak, Frank Lloyd Wright, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and
Mark Zuckerberg.

Some lesser known billionaires: Eike Batista, Ronald Burkle, Richard Schulze.

~~~
tybris
If you have what it takes to become a billionaire, you don't need college to
become rich. As for you and me...

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edge17
the first thing every kid needs to learn is opportunity cost. the second is
very basic finance and how compounding interest works. after that a lot of the
decision process will naturally fall into place by itself.

------
cophelan
I am a complete proponent of pursuing an undergraduate degree at a traditional
school. The constant networking, opportunities to round yourself as an
individual from field experts, and development of general life skills are
nearly invaluable to become a successful leader.

MBA's are a different story.

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fooandbarify
I like school, I'm not planning to drop out, but this guy isn't convincing
anyone. His basic premise is that school is the "safer" path - something that
I don't think the Zuckerbergs of the world have ever found terribly appealing.

------
fleitz
Wasn't Zuckerberg given this same advice, that he wasn't the guy who founded
Friendster, and should just stay in school? Should a business fail can't you
just go back to school? How many great business opportunities does one get in
life? I'm betting it's far less than the opportunities to blow two hundred
grand on a piece of paper.

If professors knew what business ideas would succeed and which would fail then
they'd be investing instead of teaching.

~~~
pg
_If professors knew what business ideas would succeed and which would fail
then they'd be investing instead of teaching._

It's not ideas that succeed or fail, but founders.

~~~
netcan
If that is your position (pick founders, not ideas), does this preclude you
from picking a future google/microsoft/ etc. except by chance?

I am assuming that the really big hits are a consequence of the right idea,
right time, and right people.

~~~
pg
No. The right people (eventually) find the right idea for the time.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
How could this statement be anything other than a tautology?

~~~
pg
Because it's also claiming that such people exist.

I'm not saying P(x) ≡ Q(x), but ∃x P(x) ∧ Q(x).

------
samjohn
I wish he had addressed the fact that school is incredibly expensive. It's
much harder to start a business when you are 100k in debt from your expensive
MBA (or your undergrad for that matter).

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stretchwithme
You're probably not Mark Zuckerburg, so find your own passion.

And think twice about exhortations to follow in the footsteps of the masses
too.

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invalidOrTaken
He makes a good point about the value of business experience...

...and then advocates waiting a few years before seeking such experience.

~~~
stretchwithme
Why swim to learn how to swim when you can sit and study swimming?

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NicuCalcea
Those students are probably not Zuckerberg too.

