Hi Jerry. That’s great that you were able to turn your life around, and didn’t need college for it. :) It’s always good to hear about people who had a tough life, and managed to get over that by working hard. It’s quite inspirational.

Some people will be able to do that. However, that’s only a minority.

The fact is that most people who start a business will fail. Not everyone will be a successful business owner. Risk-taking is great, but you always need to hedge your bets.

Not sure in what sector you started your businesses, but I have a friend who decided to quit his job and open up a bunch of clothing stores. Now this is the type of business that you don’t need a degree to run. He went at it for over 5 years, working day and night and not taking vacation. However, even after that time, he was barely breaking even. So he decided to call it quits and instead get employed again.

What helped him is that he had a degree, and specialist knowledge that he learned at university. Combined with the practical experience that he learned from running his business was a killer combo. However, to get that job, the practical experience would not have been enough. The degree allowed him to have a backup option.

Anyways my piece was not talking about low tech sectors like running a store, real estate or similar stuff. There I agree you don’t really need a college degree. My piece was meant to address the misconception that somehow you can start a high-tech startup without having gone to college. I see a lot of articles that say guys like Zuckerberg or Page dropped out and became billionaires by starting Facebook and Google.

In high-tech (with a partial exception for IT), it is almost impossible to do a startup without having gone to university first. Google was based on Page’s doctoral research. Page and Brin had access to Stanford’s vast resources to experiment. Zuckerberg had a similar experience, and only dropped out when his site was already the 10th largest on the internet. Had all these famous dropouts not gone to college, they would never had created the companies they did.

Or have a look at BioNTech, which is the company that came out with the first Covid-19 vaccine (the Pfizer one). That’s a startup that was started by professors who needed to have deep knowledge of cutting-edge medical research which you can only get by studying and then doing research at a university.

I am not sure what subjects your employees studied, but it’s true that not all degrees are created equal. If you study gender studies or something similar, then it will be tough to find a job. However, if you study something more tangible, then your return on investment will be there eventually. Statistically, your average college grad earns way more money than your average high school grad.

And I agree, the cost of college in the US can be quite high. However, you don’t always need to go to the most expensive schools. State schools or even community colleges can be a lot more affordable. Start off part-time, and work on the side. You can even go to Europe (which is what I did for my Master’s), and study basically for free. For your undergrad you would have to learn another language (although there are also programs in English), but a lot of grad programs are in English.