Steve Jobs dropped out of college so he could drop in to the classes that looked more interesting. Reed College offered the best calligraphy course in the country. In those classes Jobs learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, something with no practical application to his life at the time.
“But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.”
Not once in Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement address did he tell the students that the previous four years was a complete waste of time. Instead he offered this advice: “Do what you love. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” None of this is incompatible with attending college. On the contrary, college opens up a world of people, places, and possibilities that lead to transformative, world-changing ideas and innovations.
Saying no to college. Some young people disagree. The New York Times recently featured a group of entrepreneurs who are saying no to college. According to the story there is a “growing chorus of academic dissenters, who have made it fashionable to question the value of a college degree.” Groups like UnCollege advocate making money instead of paying money for a college degree.
“That’s positively silly,” says University of Waterloo economics professor, Larry Smith. I spent 40 minutes on the phone with Smith this week to get his unique insight on the topic. Smith’s TED talk on the importance of following your passion has been viewed two million times. According to Smith,
“Pursuing your passion is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success. Carmine, I didn’t say a single word in my presentation about passion being sufficient. Passion alone will not lead you to success…they [college dropout advocates] are not only mischaracterizing Steve Jobs, they are falling into a number of fallacies and traps. This argument that we are going to take on the world and create the most wonderful products by being ignorant causes a university professor like myself to go apoplectic! ”
“How do you respond to the argument that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg—all billionaires—dropped out of college?” I asked.
“And what about ‘John Henry’ and the 420,000 other people who tried ventures and failed?” Smith responded. “It’s a classic case of survivor bias. We make judgments about what we should do based on the people who survived, totally ignoring all the guidance from the people who failed.”
Smith believes that complex problems require the type of conversations, learnings, and critical thinking skills that thrive in a university environment. To match students with the needs of a 21st century global society, the University of Waterloo offers a unique “co-op” program that combines academic classes with paid, professional work experience. Most of its 16,000 students spend part of their college career employed at some of the world’s most important brands such as Google, Intel, and Facebook.
A team of Smith’s students created Bufferbox, an e-commerce company that offers temporary storage lockers so people can receive packages sent by online retailers. Google recently acquired the company. Bufferbox is the type of startup that Smith says requires an enormously complex and intellectual skill set. “The creation of a true innovation is a highly sophisticated endeavor and takes an enormous amount of intellectual ability. It’s not innate. It is created by a whole, rich array of life experiences,” Smith says.
Follow your passion, but leave room for serendipity. Syracuse University graduate and entrepreneur, Dennis Crowley, once told me that his mobile application, foursquare, “manufactured serendipity.” He meant that it enabled serendipitous moments in the physical world. The first female African-American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, once said, “I’m quite convinced that a lot of my success has been because I was doing something that I loved to do.” Her first love, was the piano. While attending Stanford University, however, she realized that she would never play Carnegie Hall, even with more practice. She was shattered, but “stumbled” into a class on international politics that transfixed her and transformed her destiny. The lesson she learned—follow your passion, but “leave room for serendipity.”
I went to UCLA. Like most students I didn’t have a path to get rich quick. I had to take the slower path of discovery. At first I discovered what I didn’t want to do. I took an acting class and decided that theater wasn’t for me. A fellow student named Ben Stiller discovered that acting was his passion and he followed it. I took pre-law classes and decided the legal field wasn’t for me. A friend discovered law was his passion and he followed it to become a partner in one of California’s largest law firms. One day I stumbled upon an elective called Rhetoric and Language. We analyzed speeches from Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and many other historical figures. I fell in love with words and communication and decided to get a masters degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern because it offered a combination of academic study, theory, and working experience as a journalist. Years later the Harvard-educated Lou Dobbs hired me at CNN because I had a Masters degree. Passion matters. Skill matters. Qualifications and degrees matter, too.
What it takes to work for a billionaire dropout. College dropout Bill Gates is parlaying his fortune into the most important work of all—saving lives. The problems he and his wife, Melinda, are trying to solve are enormously complex. Would you like to participate in the effort to cure the world of malaria and other diseases? You can. There are plenty of jobs available at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the time of this writing, they are looking for a deputy director of strategy planning in the HIV department. The candidate needs to be an “excellent communicator” along with “proven strength in structured problem solving with the ability to synthesize disparate information and critically analyze any situation.” Oh, one more qualification. Solving enormous problems require what Gates calls “critical path thinking,” so don’t bother applying unless you have a college degree, a master’s or doctorate, and an MBA.
It should be noted that while there is a small chorus of high tech dropouts who suggest college is a waste of time, millions of other young people see the value of a college experience. Among them, Reed Jobs, Steve’s son. Reed attends Stanford with the stated intent of becoming an oncologist. Reed doesn’t seem to be misinterpreting his father’s advice.