Are Drop Outs Going to Save our Economy?

Many highly successful, multimillion dollar companies have been started by college dropouts. These are men and women without degrees, without the completion of their formal education. Yet these men and women have made millions on an idea. They took a huge risk jumping from the beaten path to make their own through a thicket of challenges. They little money, support and resources, yet they made it big. These men and women made it big by relying on themselves and not their degree to become a success. Steve Jobs started Apple out of his garage with Stephen Woznaik. A Daily times article said that Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College. He dropped out of college but made so many revolutionary creation such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod. Another man who made it big and drop out of college was Bill Gates the man who helped started Microsoft, one of the most widely used computer softwares. Bill Gates went to Harvard University, one of the hardest schools to get into to, and "dropped out of Harvard in his junior year to concentrate his efforts on a company he called Microsoft" (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\08\15\story_15-8-2011_pg9_3). Both these men have accomplished great things and neither had any degree of diploma from a college. An article of the New York Times website said "American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians. It is also good at producing professionals with degrees. But we don’t have a shortage of lawyers and professors. America has a shortage of job creators" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/will-dropouts-save-america.html?_r=1&ref=opinion). This quote gives a very good assessment of the author's point of view. He views the American education system as flawed and personally I would have to agree with him. The American education system is more focused on good test scores than on any real world application of skills. We are being taught how to take tests and how to become more desirable, but not how to create more jobs. We are being told failure is not an option, that any mistakes will haunt us, if we don't do good on a test it might affect our lives outside of school. The school system needs to push children to become people that are not afraid to fail, that know that failing is a part of life and you need it to learn. While I do see the point in being someone of a higher education can be beneficial. Having a degree can get you more money on a job, it can get us a second look for a job over someone else. Yeah okay I get it with the degree being a good thing but having a degree isn't all that great. Some people will not give you a job because they will have to pay you more over someone else is you have a a higher degree. So what if you spent the last four years in college getting a m]Masters or Bachelors degree if you have no real world experience. So yes will having a degree makes you smart your not creating jobs or boosting the economy like some of the college dropouts that are out there.