The College Dropouts
Hall of Fame

You don't have to go to college to be a success. Even if you go for awhile, you don't have to graduate to be a success. Here are just a few of the people who have become famous and/or successful without graduating from college and/or high school.

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Jerry Yang, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo! Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo!

Adam Yauch, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys, rapper, songwriter, film director, Buddhist. He attended Bard College for two years before dropping out.

Anton Yelchin, actor. "I was going to go to USC and study political theory, but I really love movies. They're pretty much my favorite things, so I figured I would just keep doing this."

Chaleo Yoovidhya, billionaire. Little formal education, but he still founded a pharma business in the 1960s that developed eventually into the Red Bull energy drink business.

Jay-Z (Shawn Carter), rapper, entrepreneur, owner of Rocawear clothing, co-owner of New Jersey Nets basketball team. Never attended college. "I'm a thinker. I figure things out. I don't have a high level of education, but I'm practical--and I have great instincts."

Babe Didrikson Zaharias, golfer, basketball player, Olympic track and field star. Did not attend college.

Frank Zappa, rock musician. Probably dropped out of college. As he noted in liner notes for his Freak Out album, "Drop out of school before your mind rots from our mediocre educational system."

Catherine Zeta-Jones, actress. Dropped out of school at the age of 15 to join a touring production of The Pajama Game.

Robert Zimmerman, see Bob Dylan.

Emile Zola, French novelist. Failed his baccalaureate, which I believe is the French way of saying he did not graduate from college.

Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook. Dropped out of Harvard to continue working on the social networking website he founded in his dorm room in 2004. Facebook has more than 300 million users.

As an alternative to a college education, check out Zero Tuition College and the new book by Blake Boles, Better Than College.

  Click here to read Seth Godin's manifesto on school change.

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“Eventually I came to conclude that I could not find real knowledge in academic life, only hierarchies of knowledge that led, ultimately, to more hierarchies, not to more knowledge. I began to see university learning as limited, human, and relative. What was seen as absolutely up-to-date did not consider the infinite and timeless.” — Sharon Daniels, author, The World of Truth

Schools teach children to obey. They espouse the things we—the ruling generation—want kids to know. No wonder most schools are pressure cookers where bored teachers meet bored children.... Modern education is a wasted investment. It doesn't deliver what we need the most: creative answers to the challenges of our times... It isn't a surprise that many of the people who've had the greatest influence on our times were—from the perspective of education—failures.
— Jurriaan Kamp, Ode magazine editor

When Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, was asked by Newsweek magazine, “As a young man you worked summers in a slaughterhouse. What did you learn from that.” His answer? “To go to college.” Sometimes, college is a better alternative.

There are only about 10 to 20 rappers that are in the game making money with album after album. Do the math and get your education. — Jay-Z