Meet Zuck, a 28 year old self-made billionaire, founder of Facebook, fluent in Mandarin and English, young, energetic and notably a proud Stanford college or university dropout. Oh, by the way, he is ordinarily mortal too – At least that reduces the level of disparity between him and I.
In Africa, Uganda in particular, education is revered with so much ferocity. To alternatively attain this kind of reverence, one would need to have climbed up the social ladder through amassing vast wealth.
Often when one seconds a “drop-out-of-school” argument, they are treated with such contempt; they are termed silly, myopic, insane and all those ridiculous terms, have you ever wondered why?
Imagine the kind of foes you associate yourself with – 90% of them are actually from school – we basically go to school to make friends, then, attain knowledge. Imagine the people you would be associating with, otherwise.
The elites boast of being well traveled as well as being well taught; under microcosm, university gives people an opportunity to interact with all kinds of people from all walks of life. One gets a bigger picture just like that.
Most of the professions are regulated by the respective organizations under conventional certification procedures; one doesn’t become a self-taught neuro-surgeon or practicing lawyer. It’s all learnt through school.
There is no knowledge that is useless, Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence asserts that education nurtures and develops ones abilities. Look at Jobs – even though he dropped out because of circumstances beyond his control – he studied many different unrelated courses that gave him a better understanding of the real world.
You can always learn many other things on the go, naturally, time is a very scarce resource that one has to make ample use for; therefore doing a particular programme shouldn’t make you miserably imprisoned, it’s all about your flexibility.
Well, the rebuttal against this may be high, but where I come from – Uganda – university is a fountain of knowledge, it’s where politicians emanate from, it’s where research is carried out, it where market tests and feasibility studies are carried, it’s where various kinds of relationships are sealed and above all it’s where self discovery is best done.
Don’t despair! The Pete Cashmore’s, Zuckerberg’s, Bill Gate’s, Michael Dells of this world came from well to do families according to their countries’ standards. How many of us have family fall back positions in case things went bad (for 95% of start-ups that fail)??? If you were among the 5% that would make it or change the world, then, you would have dropped out already BUT if you are still contemplating, forget it. It is just hype sired by a success story that has overshadowed a million failures.
Dropping out of university doesn’t mean a successful future. Dropping out of university is overrated, drop it already!
Image: Makerere University