Key Takeaways
- Tech executives like Palantir CEO Alex Karp have said they don't care if or where employees went to college—work performance matters more.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook (photo above) has said a four-year degree isn't required to work at Apple.
- Tech has seen a number of college dropouts make billions, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Executives at top tech companies are telling young people to rethink the purpose of education, and even whether they should attend college at all.
Tech has had a range of successful college dropouts in its history, and the industry is being shaken up by the growing influence of artificial intelligence, leaving some new graduates struggling to land the high-paying jobs that were once plentiful.
I’m living proof you don’t need a certain college major to do alright in life.
At Sarah Lawrence College, I didn’t have a major. Nobody did — the school’s undergraduate program doesn’t have them. I have the oft-mocked and statistically underpaid bachelor’s in liberal studies.
And while luck has probably contributed a fair amount to my success — I’ve remained gainfully employed the entire time I’ve been out of school — it’s kind of funny now to think there was a time I was so anxious that my degree wouldn’t get me anywhere.
The question of whether your college major matters (if you even have one) is similar to the question of whether having a degree at all matters in that the answer is yes and no.
There’s plenty of data to support the idea that more education will help you earn more money. But there is also not quite a shortage of success stories of people who didn’t get a degree. Billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey are among many who famously dropped out of college.
The same goes for majors. Plenty of statistics can show you which degrees tend to correlate with higher earnings. Meanwhile, some hugely successful names in various industries studied something completely different than what would define their careers. READ MORE...
