Has ‘dropout’ become the pre-requisite for success?

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Brad Pitt, Ted Turner, Subhash Chandra, Sandeep Maheshwari are dropouts from formal education and made their mark in their fields. But does it mean that ‘dropout’ has become the pre-requisite for success?

I, recently, looked at the cover page of the Robert Kiyosaki’s new book which is telling ‘If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Don't Go to School?’ It made me curious to study more about the ‘Dropout Theory’ and know the fact.

While researching on the relationship between the success and dropouts, I landed on the research of The Atlantic newspapers which tells that the majority of America’s 30 million dropouts are more likely than graduates to be unemployed, poor, and in deficit.

Names like Jobs, Gates, Dell, and others spreads the myth about the relationship between a successful entrepreneurs and dropout from the college. These are exceptional individuals whose hard work, determination, and intelligence make up for the lack of a college degree.

Those who are able to achieve such success often rely on a set of skills already developed before they get to college. They know how to educate themselves, get a bank loan, and manage their time and their money. They may benefit from a network of family, friends and acquaintances who open doors and provide a safety net.

But what happens to young people without access to these important resources? For them, skipping college to pursue business success is like investing their savings in lottery tickets in the hopes they will be a multimillion-dollar winner.

The reality is that the next college dropout will not be Bill Gates, James Cameron, or Mark Zuckerberg. He will likely belong to the millions of college drop-outs who struggled to earn his livelihood. Nearly as large as the state of California, this group is 71 percent more likely to be unemployed and four times more likely to default on student loans. Far from being millionaires, they earn 32 percent less than college graduates, on average.

The vast majority of students, especially from disadvantaged family, need formal education to know the way that how to avail the available resources for their upliftment. For them, college is not a choice but a necessary and vital stepping-stone toward a future of opportunity. It is the platform from which whole families can be lifted to better prospects.

Irrespective of any education system, schools and colleges provide intellectual capital to succeed and the social capital to help them make connections, build networks, and establish life-long relationships.

It provides them with skills in analysis and reasoning combined with confidence that will lead them boldly to articulate and embrace new ideas. It transforms their perspectives, opening them up to different cultures, different world views, and different ways of seeing -- and solving -- some of the world's most complex problems.

‘Dropout by choice’ having necessary skills to succeed can never be generalized to the weak general mass of people who are not born with talents or resources, their only hope is to get enlightened through education and schools and colleges are one of the ideal places to achieve that.