10 Surprising Techie College Dropouts

Time's Person of the Year Mark Zuckerberg is missing one notable thing from his otherworldly resume: a college degree. Though Zuckerberg famously conceived of his all-powerful social network in his Harvard dorm room, he eventually left the school to focus on the website full-time. Not a bad decision.

When it comes to his lack of credentials, Zuckerberg's in good company -- at least in the wide world of technology. The list of tech scions who left college before graduating runs long and contains many of the world's wealthiest men (if you know of any successful female dropouts, let us know at college [at] huffingtonpost [dot] com).

See below 10 tech luminaries who left school and hit it big. If we missed one, chime in below.

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Bill Gates

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Gates left Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with Paul Allen (see next slide). He received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2007.

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Gates left Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with Paul Allen (see next slide). He received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2007.

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Comments

[kansasmagic]

01:21 AM on 12/21/2010

I'm struck by a thought: If Gates and Jobs had not dropped out of college first, would the more recent founders/dropouts of Twitter (and Facebook, Napster, etc.) have achieved anything like their current levels of success? It seems to me that basically inventing the modern personal computer is a more significant achievement that inventing a (unpredictably) popular way of using that computer. It's purely speculation, but what would (say) Evan Williams have invented, if he didn't have the computer (and operating system, programming language, and GUI, etc.) already in place? The influence of luck, timing, and simply building on a long legacy of other peoples' successes (and failures) on personal fortunes is not recognized often enough. All we know of Williams from this story is that he thought college is a "waste of time," and that he "wanted to start working" - so, hey, if he can dropout of college and become a millionaire, then why can't everyone else?

[carnitine]

12:57 AM on 12/16/2010

Going to college doesn't make someone 'smart'.

[runfellow]

10:07 AM on 12/16/2010

Neither does not going to college.

[catcancook]

08:51 PM on 12/15/2010

These are people who had big dreams but had their dreams not worked out, they may have returned to college to get their degree. We will only know those names (above) who are a huge success and did not graduate. There are no doubt countless of young people who also left college to pursue dreams but never made it to the big Time or on the cover of Time for that matter.

My son was inspired to go to Reed because Jobs attended but (thankfully) he graduated and he is employed working with Macs of all things!

[Danilo-11]

08:13 PM on 12/15/2010

I love how the "Anti-education" crowd always says "Look at how many millionaires don't have a college degree". It's just like the NBA, for every person in the NBA making $10 million, there's 10 million people that didn't make it and are now flipping burgers.

[ragtag]

10:51 AM on 12/16/2010

Yep, it's a ratio problem.

For every success story, there are thousands, if not millions, of failures.

[kansasmagic]

01:28 AM on 12/21/2010

That's not the only thing that gets left out. How many millionaires *do* have college degrees? (Followup question: How many have degrees in the "useless" liberal arts, or social sciences?) How many of these "self-made" millionaires made their money by selling, or re-branding, or slightly altering another person's invention? How many millionaires are truly visionaries, and how many just lucked into a market on its way up? And how many of those who point to stories like these as proof that "you don't need a college degree" - have college degrees?

[Cornhusker40]

07:49 PM on 12/15/2010

Just goes to show you. Those diploma's are just a "GD piece of paper!"

[medvidek72]

09:47 PM on 12/15/2010

Your ability to pluralize a noun is a clear demonstration.

[DessLoch]

03:43 AM on 12/16/2010

Maybe they're joking. I really hope they're joking.

[Liz Patrick]

02:32 PM on 12/16/2010

Actually diploma can be pluralized. It's more interesting that they made it possessive instead of plural.

[Wintersoldier7020]

06:48 PM on 12/15/2010

Evan Williams ....good bourbon.

[marc in OR]

06:33 PM on 12/15/2010

As a retired college professor in business, dropping out of a degree program was never something I advocated for most of my students, who lacked the enormous drive, focus, and pure intellect that this small sample illustrates.

I think that Michael Dell (Dell Computer) is also a dropout, who did not earn an undergraduate degree while attending the University of Texas at Austin. No matter, since all of these men are highly motivated and self disciplined individuals. Gates was known to read Physics books for pure enjoyment!

[fem56]

09:56 PM on 12/15/2010

Great points.

[DessLoch]

04:24 AM on 12/16/2010

That's true about Dell. Ted Waitt of Gateway Computers and Sir Richard Branson also.
Timing is everything I don't think these folks would have dropped out to just hang out, they weren't those types. If their big ideas hadn't happened when they did, they likely would have completed their programs.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen already had major Fortune 500 clients when they dropped out of college to work on building their business full time. Larry Page and Sergey Brinn of Google, and Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo took leaves of absences from their Stanford PhD programs to start up their companies. Google actually grew from Larry Page's Dissertation so that must have given him an interesting choice.
Amar Bose was already an acoustical engineering professor when he got is idea for headphones. Did not have to stop teaching thankfully and grew his company to 12k employees and a personal net worth of 2B at one time. Unlike others on the list his company remains private, so to me he impresses even more.

[TazExprez]

05:07 PM on 12/15/2010

These people had a certain amount of luck and had the right idea at the right time and had enough knowledge and ability to execute their ideas. I certainly would not go to a doctor that dropped out and insurance would not pay for such a doctor.

[human2008]

04:56 PM on 12/15/2010

These people are great, but for the majority, college is important source of knowledge and career path. I don't think anyone would like to go to a physician who dropped out of college before the degree and internships.

[ThomasPaine1776]

01:43 PM on 12/27/2010

The University experience is more than a trade school. It makes you aware of the "universe", hence the name. There are people that are educated, and people that are not. There is a huge gap. I always pity people that have not fully experienced the University: learning about everything in the universe: World History, Life science, Earth Science, Some mathematics, a language, having an expert in his field, at the top of his game now, teach you about the greatest examples of Literature he knows of, and what it REALLY means. Having someone, who is REALLY INTO it, teach you about ancient civilizations and human physiology and anthropology, and even astronomy, all interwoven in a great lecture, and have him bring in EXAMPLES, actual items from that time.....being forced to produce a peer reviewable paper, to take a stand on something and to defend it...with footnotes. It makes a man of you. Arranging for the construction and sale of widgets does not make you an enlightened, renaissance man. Higher education at a University can.

[Hobzer]

11:07 AM on 12/29/2010

But what if I don't want to be an enlightened, renaissance man? What if all I want is to have a steady job and a family.

Don't pity me because I didn't attend a university and stop acting the snobby educated stereotype you make yourself out to be.

[Benedictus70]

04:23 PM on 12/15/2010

Waiting for the flood of comments condemning higher education as a scam because hey, Bill Gates.

[kansasmagic]

01:02 AM on 12/21/2010

They always forget to mention that he was not just a "dropout," but a "Harvard dropout."

[curiousasheck]

02:47 PM on 12/15/2010

Unless you were born into a well to do family you might want to think about dropping out before you do it.