It's Never Really About Dropping Out

http://www.ihany.com/2011/10/its-never-really-about-dropping-out/

by kloncks • 15 years ago

155 68 15 years ago

Spot on. I am a college dropout and founder of a YC-funded, venture-backed startup. Whenever I talk at my old university, I always tell people that dropping out is by no means a rite of passage or prerequisite to success. I have an acquaintance who was able to start a company with $1MM in revenue while staying in school.

There is no glory in dropping out. "Dropouts" are not some super-class of people who are destined to save America. It's just something I had to do in order to have the time to start the company I wanted to start.

Addendum: The best dropouts are those who would do well in school anyway. I've had people tell me "I'm barely passing in school because the stuff doesn't interest me. I'll drop out and I do what I want to do". There are 1001 things about running a company that are more boring than your school homework. If you can't do well when someone gives you a curriculum and is helping you, you don't stand a chance keeping yourself motivated enough to start a company.

laluser2• 15 years ago

I agree with almost all your points, especially on the idea that the best dropouts are the ones are the ones who would do well in school anyways. However, I am not sure that someone who can't follow a curriculum will translate into someone doing poorly when a curriculum is not given to them in the "real world". Some people thrive on not having rules to abide by. Curriculums, especially those created in the school system, are not a one size fits all, so you might occasionally get people who do really bad under them.

chrischen3• 15 years ago

That's true. Sir Richard Branson probably didn't do well in school and probably wouldn't have had he continued that route.

Jage• 15 years ago

Steve Jobs and Sean Parker don't actually seem like they'd do well in school. Their temperament and personality types run counter to how school is structured, while in companies people are more capable of getting away with a kind of free-wheeling style.

I'll speak for myself when I say I hate school. It's not about education, I wonder when it was. Not anymore for sure, more about that piece of paper at the end of it all that says "you can get a job now". It's about not having to do the work yourself and on your own initiate. It's about teaching you to be an employee.

I never saw the value in it. If one's considering going for it any time, even once in a college, my advice is GO. Even if you fail, at least you'll sleep a little better at night.

Educations' flaws are deep in the system itself. It comes from the Industrial mentality of worker lines and an Enlightenment paradigm of the mind, both of which at best are fallacious. Education can't be given. You're not extracting valuable skills by bullshitting that English paper.

Education is something you honestly have to desire and seek.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

The best dropouts are those who would do well in school anyway

That's a great quote. Good to keep in mind. The more folks talk up the college dropout thing, the more concerned I become that people will come to see dropping out as a positive thing, even when you don't do it for the right reasons.

randomdata2• 15 years ago

By the same token, a degree isn't going to help someone who wouldn't have done well in business anyway. There is nothing you can do to prepare yourself for success, so stop worrying and just do what feels right for you.

sandstrom• 15 years ago

Completely agree! Especially with the fact that good dropouts would have done well in school anyway.

Larry Summers mentioned in some interview that although both Gates and Zuckerburg dropped out, they were already better educated than most people are after the average college education when they enrolled at Harvard (studying at Lakeside School and Phillips Exeter).

tjoff2• 15 years ago

There is a huge difference between having an assignment you don't feel for and having to do something boring that has immediate purpose. I totally get that running your own company involves a lot of things that you probably never were interested in but, I imagine, that running an own company it's very easy (comparatively) to see the purpose of everything you do (and the consequences of not) and that can make the exact same task so much easier.

For some people that alone is the difference between a depression and a happy fulfilling life.

The same could be applied to school of course, you do this assignment so that you can pass the class and eventually earn a paper that says that you did something. But that is too abstract for many and the motivation required for that is completely different. The subject itself might be really interesting and you really would love to play around with it on your spare time but you don't feel you have time because you have a pointless assignment in your way. It's not that that situation is unique to studying but the motivation required can be completely different (why are you studying, to learn or to get a grade?). Saying that the best dropouts are those who would do well in school anyway really didn't sound right in my ears.

Other than that I agree with you and the article but I think you both fail to recognize that dropping out says something as well. If you drop out out of free will that says something about you and your values and that is not without value (depending on why you did it).

dmak• 15 years ago

This is how I feel. What should I do?

Shenglong• 15 years ago

I feel schools teaching and testing terribly boring and insignificant material has helped romanticize the concept of dropping out. After all, people will say, why are you in school, if you're better than that?

The sooner people stop expecting university to be a stepping stone rather than an experience, the sooner the dropouts-will-save-america notion will fade. University is a lot of fun, and it's not just a passage to a job.

absconditus• 15 years ago

The key is education, not schooling. The conflation of the two is unfortunate.

jayfuerstenberg2• 15 years ago

Agreed.

I know so many people who attended university but are less interested in lifelong learning than people who never attended.

University is an environment for those who benefit from such.

johnx123-up• 15 years ago

Brilliant. IOW, education is shortcut to knowledge; you can get knowledge anywhere--not just from college.

thomasdavis• 15 years ago

Great men live for mastery and academia but modern universities have nothing to do with either therefore attending is a waste of precious years. University takes up your spare time that you could be learning things that you're passionate about, it also seeds poisonous ideas into your head.

This is mostly relevant to the tech community at the moment because we have had the tools to make our education open enabling the guys mentioned in the article to educate them self.

Once the other industries start openly publishing educational material then the true power of passionate self development will be known.

rimantas• 15 years ago

Funny, university helped me to find out the things I am passionate about. It also helped me to see the broader picture. Universities can help those passionate self developers immensely.

laluser2• 15 years ago

While all the companies mentioned are the creation of dropouts, it still took hundreds (thousands in some cases) of people to bring all those companies to the point of maturity that they are at now with the help of extremely talented college degreed people.

Fluxx• 15 years ago

Agreed. Dropping out is risky, but it can give you rewards. College always gives you great, though sometimes less great, rewards.

whackedspinach• 15 years ago

I went to a job fair a few weeks ago where a few of the engineers from a very hardcore coding company said "Why don't you drop out? I never really found a degree useful." That's the problem though. College isn't about the degree or the resume building. It's about meeting people, having fun, and spending late nights hacking on projects for the hell of it.

I could graduate in three years or less, but I would be missing out on an experience that will most likely be extremely beneficial.

lurker172• 15 years ago

Be extremely suspicions of advice that takes the form, "If you want to achieve the position that I have, don't behave like me".

Fliko4• 15 years ago

Unfortunately your experience isn't the case for all colleges, which is why some people leave the system really bitter about the entire thing.

brackin• 15 years ago

I would also say that many that attend College do not earn more because they went to college but they were capable of doing so, they were intelligent enough to do so.

Of course there is no glory in dropping out but there is no glory in working on a startup, whatever happens it'll be tough. If you can't imagine taking the risk of dropping out then the risk of starting a company is something much bigger to overcome.

College is for a lot of people, I don't think that dropping out makes you more successful in any way. But I think that time is money and if your time could be better spent then go for it.

You have nothing to lose that this age, once you've got all this debt and as you get older you have a lot more to lose.

mc32• 15 years ago

For people who have the smarts, supportive family structure (have the ability and will help) and already know what they want to do, they can probably do well despite dropping out. For people who haven't figured things out or need the nurturing and or guidance and don't have anyone back home as safety-net dropping out is not going to help; I don't think.

So, yeah, for super smart people institutional education might prove redundant, but for many, that's where they are going to learn how to interface with the economy with improved effectiveness, make connections and build relationships (network).

redfloatplane• 15 years ago

Recently, I've been thinking very hard about dropping out of college. Here in Ireland, the education system is somewhat different to the way it is in the US and many other parts of the world. You pick a course, and then for the next three or four years, you attend only the classes that belong to that course. There's very little choice in the matter (though you can technically attend other classes, but not officially and at the lecturer's discretion).

I'm in my third year of a four year computer games development course. I absolutely love the course, the lecturers, and of course my friends at college.

I've been thinking about dropping out because I've been finding the course difficult recently and because I've got a skewed vision of myself, of my motivations and my abilities. It's so easy to think "I'll drop out and then I'll have the time to do this and this and this and this," and much harder to think "If I drop out I'll spend every day on the couch playing videogames and growing less and less as a person."

That's not the way it is for everyone, but it is the way it is for me. If you told me you were thinking about dropping out, I'd ask for the proof that you're not going to waste, because that's such an easy trap to fall into. Dropping out gives you a chance to do the best things you can do, but it gives you the chance to do nothing, too.

Tsagadai• 15 years ago

Honestly, if you have made it to the third year of a four year degree you should stay in school. Here is the best reason most people never mention, visas. If you have a degree it is easier to move internationally. If you don't have a degree or at least a million you are pretty much stuck in the queue. It's paper and credentialism but that is what bureaucracies like immigration departments care most about.

arvinjoar• 15 years ago

I see myself as a world citizen (or perhaps as a sovereign individual) and I loathe borders and bureaucracy. With that said though, I would like to be able to move as much as I can and you have to (to a certain extent) play ball with the powers that be. Thank you for giving me another item to put on the "pro-side" of getting a degree.

evanmoran3• 15 years ago

The reason college matters is because people take hard classes and have to fight through them to graduate. Hard is the point of it, not the problem! Now you just have to figure out how to do what the class asks you to do. Work harder. Study more. Make a schedule of when you have to study. Talk to the professor, to TAs, to tutors. Go to every office hour / study group / class you can. You can do it, but you will have to grow as a person to make it. That is the point. Good luck=).

5655556562• 15 years ago

what if the college does not offer hard classes. I am not talking about a scenario where I am brilliant and know everything, I am talking about a scenario where classes are not really hard. Everything is on a basic level and no advanced level stuff.

randomdata2• 15 years ago

Having grown up on a farm, working hard is what you do. Not just physically, but mentally too. When equipment breaks, you have to figure out how to fix it. When a unique problem arises, you have to engineer a solution. You have to learn a lot and you have to learn how to learn on the spot. And you're doing all of that before you even enter high school.

I understand that kids growing up in the city are most often not afforded the same opportunities. I personally did not find much benefit to college, but based on your comment, it seems I already received my "college education" when I was a kid. Has college become a substitute for the learning that most children are missing out on as a result of modern societal forces?

0x122• 15 years ago

A university level computer games development course?

How does that follow, wouldn't it be much more practical to do a general cs curriculum and then to specialize in visualization and/or interaction rather than something so narrow as games?

kabdib2• 15 years ago

Games are anything but narrow.

Your average top-tier game needs to do (just off the top of my head) -

- security

- database access (in real time)

- effective storage management, both in RAM and on disk, of gigabytes of data

- hard-deadline scheduling (every 60th or 30th of a second)

- some serious algorithmic work for physics simulations, rendering, AI and so forth

- networking

- asset management

- build systems

- scripting and customization

- user support, updates, in-game sales

... I could go on and on. Games span the entire stack of modern computing, from bare metal (worrying about how flash wear leveling works, or interrupt latency) to global-scale networking and how politics affects your ability to encrypt voice data.

Games are anything but "narrow".

wh-uws• 15 years ago

What about Larry, Sergey, Jeff Bezos? Even Jerry Yang and David Filo.

None of them dropped out of or skipped undergrad college.

kloncks2• 15 years ago

My point exactly.

Dropping out isn’t an accomplishment, any more than money is a sign of achievement. Sometimes, but not always, it’s simply a symptom of success.

ladon86• 15 years ago

All but one of those dropped out of grad school though...

bmac27• 15 years ago

It's not simply about what's "boring" and "not boring", which is subjective anyway. It's about tangible vs. intangible. Most school coursework is intangible & lacking context; grades have little to no bearing on real-world performance and book knowledge very often doesn't translate into solving problems & generating solutions for paying customers.

There are plenty of people who love learning but who just aren't interested in academia, in being told what to learn, what to spit out on some trivial assessment etc. And the fact that these people can motivate themselves enough to blaze an autodidactic path as opposed to relying on dictation from other people ought to be proof enough that those are folks who have more than enough motivation to start a company.

sector• 15 years ago

If I see somebody who graduated summa from a decent school, I instantly know at least one thing about them: they're good at identify what the customer wants, and delivering it. You simply can't graduate top of your class unless you find a way to give dozens of (sometimes unreasonable, often unclear) people what they wanted, when they wanted it.

namank3• 15 years ago

Explain Steve Jobs please.

Sure he went and sat in some courses but only for a limited time and only when he thought they taught something he liked, like calligraphy.

Doesn't that imply that school is but a matter of interest? So if your interest lies in building something great RIGHT NOW, wouldn't it be better for you to not waste time and money at school but rather go do something you so dearly want?

My intent here is not to discredit your post. Though I see the value in your post, I post this only to avoid you and your readers from clumping all dropouts into a category. My view is that school is not for everyone. Some people have this innate understanding of the world and thoughts so radical that school only serves to beat them into another brick in the wall. This is unfair to them and unfair of society to judge them.

Personally, I think that if YOU believe in it and if you believe in yourself, then right now is as best a time as ever. School or not. Everyone has to decide for themselves.

kloncks2• 15 years ago

author of post here.

Steve Jobs might not have completed much college, but the company he created wouldn't have been successful without Woz who more closely resembles the model I wrote about.

Steve dropped out of college without any plan. That (miraculously) worked.

But it wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for Woz (and others)...Jobs really couldn't have done anything he ended up doing without others. Woz, like others, only left when it was clear something else would be a good option and that point only grudgingly.

namank3• 15 years ago

Miraculous?

So what about NEXT and Pixar? Apple the second time? They were also just strokes of miraculous luck? I disagree.

Of course it takes technical talent to start a company but that doesn't mean you need it to make a big/good company. This points to the diversity of our personalities. Steve knew how to make it work. The focus, confidence, perseverance, risk-taking dedication, and whatever else it took, only he knows. Those of us who lack in any of these departments make up for it by getting degrees. The rest of us, like Woz, do it to for passion.

Doesn't mean degrees are the requirement.

At this point I want to make it clear that I'm also back in school. I didn't come back because I couldn't make it work. I came back because I LOVE engineering. I want to learn more and I want to build things. I don't have the resources of labs and funding to do it on my own so I came back - rest assured the piece of paper I get upon graduation had NOTHING to do with it.

lemmsjid• 15 years ago

People get such different experiences at institutions of higher learning. I completed my BA at a small, teaching-focused college, and don't regret a minute of it. I felt like it was an excellent preparation for my subsequent career, even though I was in a completely different field than I majored in. I had passionate professors with high standards, who continually challenged me to up the ante. I came into college thinking I was pretty smart, and, like intellectual boot camp, they stripped away those egotistical veneers of self-congratulatory-smartdom and made me realize how impossibly huge the world is, and how many perspectives there can be, and how I exist in the world not as a calcified foundation of knowledge and opinions, but as an agent who navigates the world by learning, listening, and observing.

One moment that stands out is when I turned in what I felt was a nicely articulate paper, one that would have been an easy A, and it came back with a D and a "see me in my office." The professor dressed me down and had me write it again. Why? Because I was critiquing the subject material rather than respecting it.

I plunged right into start-up world after graduating, and it felt very familiar, in the sense that in a startup you're constantly confronting uncertainty and unknowing to the point where you have to become comfortable with those feelings. Once again, you become an agent of learning rather than an agent of knowing.

I hear about people from larger schools complaining about huge classes taught by processors with no interest in teaching, where they have no conversation happening, and no direct feedback--and I think I would be sufficiently frustrated in such a situation that I would have been more inclined to drop out if the opportunity were there. I even hear from people who went to my school who hated every minute of it--you just can't tell.

I also don't think college is a foundational requirement for success--I know plenty of people in the tech world who didn't complete their BA and who are doing just fine--I honestly can say it doesn't have much bearing to see someone's educational credentials on a resume unless I also can see their body of work.

It all comes down to what your own experience is. Which is why I'm throwing in my two-cents...I'd hate for someone who IS having a good experience think that they need to drop out because Steve Jobs did.

vegai• 15 years ago

Smart people go to college but they don't know what they want yet. If they find out and make it before they graduate, they drop out, because it would be an incredible waste of time to do otherwise.

baby• 15 years ago

Thanks, in times when I'm really thinking about dropping out reading this really helps me not doing a mistake.

code_duck• 15 years ago

Dropping out and continuing on to be very successful is a sign that

1> you did not fit in with the college establishment or other students

and/or 2> you learn in a different way than others and were not benefiting from college

and/or 3> you had already obtained/saw the possibility of obtaining better opportunities in another way.

Does this fit all successful people? Is this sort of history distinctive to very successful people, or required of them? Of course not. Some very successful people have similar experiences, especially #2 - but going into the world without the college experience is not for everyone.

chrischen3• 15 years ago

"After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made."

Steve Jobs' reasoning was probably the main inspiration for me dropping out. And he makes a really good point. I also dropped out before I had any form of "success" (and it's also been one of the best decisions I've made). I'd like to think that if you'll succeed in life you'll do so whether or not you go to college. But the pressure to succeed becomes immense when you do something like drop out of college. That probably speeds things up.

But still, I agree completely that this Steve Jobs type dropping out should not be so readily encouraged. I only did it because I was absolutely sure about most of the things Jobs described in that quote above.

lurker172• 15 years ago

Steve Jobs was a (mildly) successful independent businessman before he dropped out. This is key.

chrischen3• 15 years ago

"It was pretty scary at the time"

The point was that he made the decision in a time of general uncertainty, but certain that dropping out was the right decision.

0x122• 15 years ago

People drop out of school and out of university for all the wrong reasons. Laziness, unable to look past the next test to the larger picture of what being educated is all about.

The people that drop out for the right reasons may have such motivations as 'I can't learn faster or more here than elsewhere', 'the company I started needs me more than I need a degree' and so on.

Those people aren't really dropping out. They're taking a short-cut because they already accomplished what the people that stay in the program are still trying to achieve.

mattdeboard• 15 years ago

This is my position, I feel. I am debating whether to continue attending classes for my BS AND juggling my full-time well-paid development job AND single parenthood, or drop the former, since I'm pursuing the former to get the full-time well-paid development job.

For me it's all about opportunity cost. The time I'm spending on coursework is time I'm not spending doing self-enrichment stuff I actually enjoy, and is far more useful.

rayhano• 15 years ago

This should be re-titled to "Lazy people drop-out, genius is doing something better before dropping out"

dspillett• 15 years ago

Definitely.

The problem with the word "drop out" is that people are starting to use it as if every drop out has something special to offer. Most drop out for reasons that do not leave them in a state to be helpful to society as a whole. Some drop-out just because they signed up for the wrong course to start with (and, disillusioned, often don't return for another shot at something else), some because they get lazy, and so forth. I dropped out for personal reasons (I went properly metalist for a while, bipolar before it was trendy to be, and was medically signed-off) though luckily I'd made an impression on a local company the year before and got a part-time job with them while I sorted myself out (one day a week at first, then two, and so on until I ended up there full time) and I'm still there now.

It isn't dropping out that is important. It is where you drop in to, or push your way into, afterwards. Just dropping out is not an answer to anything. Dropping out to pursue a thought-out and potentially ground-breaking idea (or just a dream: it can be about personal growth more than career building or world changing) often is.

Most drop-outs make nothing of themselves and we shouldn't be encouraging it as a way forward (though I firmly believe that many people would be more successful building their career without University (the system is against me on this one!) but again dropping out isn't the answer on its own here: don't go, or if you go and find you've made the wrong decision have somewhere to move on to planned before you make another big decision that might be equally wrong). I was lucky. Mid-/long-term (short term was a slowish start, the first 6 months at least mainly spent "fixing" myself) I dropped into a better position then some of my friends graduated into and have built a healthy career. Many aren't so lucky, or are just perpetual drop-outs. Some are following an idea or dream and a few of those are destined to be game changers, but only a few.

bad_user• 15 years ago

I agree with the article.

My story is not as romantic as most dropouts that have started a company / followed their dream. I have had to work for a living, and because I started working in what was the equivalent of a sweat shop with very inflexible hours and a lot of hard/boring work, I had to dropout since I couldn't do both. The time spent and the things learned in college, however, were invaluable and I regret not finishing it.

With that said, I do believe that the industry still places too much weight on college/masters degree. And I think this is what amazes people: that a couple of dropouts that wouldn't pass through their shitty filters are some of the richest / most innovative people in the world.

A college purpose should be to teach and enrich people's lives, but shouldn't be used for classifying people, unless you're talking about people with no work experience.

freshfey• 15 years ago

The problem is that a lot of people think that dropping out == stopping to learn, which is extremely wrong (at least in my case). I think that's what Michael Ellsberg is describing so well in his book.

Education is still important, people. But how you get it (formal, informal, practical, etc.) doesn't matter anymore.

toyg• 15 years ago

I dropped out not once, not twice, but three times from three different courses; I now make more money than most of my high-school peers, and this only because I WAS DAMN LUCKY to end up in a fairly obscure niche of a very small but lucrative market.

I'll always regret not getting that damn degree, because now I simply couldn't get back "on the rails" if I wanted to: my CV will be dropped by 99.9% of standard employers, no matter how well I might be performing at my current job. My sons (now 2 and 0) will get a university education, may that be the last thing I do.

At the same time, I know people who saw through their undergraduate course in 7 years (not uncommon, in Italy, for hard-science degrees) and that also was not good -- some of them are now damaged in psychological terms, clinically depressed and underemployed. That should not happen.

evanmoran3• 15 years ago

The worst part of this drop-out fad is people miss out on going to college-the-experience. As opposed to college-the-education. It turns out it is actually awesome to hang out, learn stuff, and meet people 24/7. Work can give you some of it, but not everyone is committed in the same way. Different ages, different motivations, it won't be the same. The experience is worth as much as the education.

It's Never Really About Dropping Out

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