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As a graduate of H.K. University (School of Hard Knocks) I think it helps but most of the truly successful people I ever managed money for and some  of the ones I work with now, never graduated from any higher ed.  And these people have success beyond the definition of most.  Interesting dynamic.

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Dale
www.ourbestidea.com
www.maskerinsurance.com
www.maskercreations.net

Not really. If you have never graduated from college, you`re going to tend to attract like clients. Therefore, the majority of your clients never graduated from college. That doesn`t prove anything at all except those particular people did it without an education. What you don`t know is (a) how many without an education have had failed businesses and bankruptcy due to their lack of education, and more importantly (b) how much more successful the vast majority of those with higher education have been than your small sample group.

Any education study will show you how much more earning power college graduates and beyond have as opposed to just high school or less, and these studies aren`t just reflecting those working in corporate America.

Age-old topic of those who don`t have an education argue against getting one, while those of us with one know better. You`ll never hear an well-educated person say that the process was useless in their success.

I guess one moral of the story is that if a person doesn`t have a degree and all they have is themselves, they may find a way to make it since that`s all they`ve got. But what we`ll never know is how much more successful they would have been, both in subject matter expertise and in general thinking processes, had they gone to college.

Yes, Bill Gates dropped out his junior year and went on to become the world`s richest man. Bill Gates also dropped out of HARVARD UNIVERSITY, and he`s a genius to begin with, and he`s a visionary and an extremely hard worker.
If your clients have all of that going for them, well, then I guess it`s a different story altogether.




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Jeff A. Gregory President, Chief Brand Strategist Brand Counsel, LLC     Branding Brilliance    www.brandcounselllc.com

Good bunch of people, all.  Those that had the advantage of a higher education and those that bootstrapped.  All I am saying is that a higher education is not NECESSARY for success.  In a manner of speaking it is like it is not Necessary for a car to be a Mercedes, just that it get you from point A to point B. 

 And most of the men I deal with, never went bankrupt, just made the American Dream come true through sheer hard work.  Their way might have been easier if they had more education but interestingly the one true trait that all successful people have is sheer grit.  A willingness to create a dream and see it through, no matter what.  I respect that in a business person. 

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Dale
www.ourbestidea.com
www.maskerinsurance.com
www.maskercreations.net

I agree. I also greatly respect highly intelligent people who also bootstrapped their way through college and graduate school. Like most of the entrepreneurs in biotech and high-tech who I know.

Again, those of us with both (an education and the grit to succeed) are doubly as likely to succeed. I like my chances better with both.


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Jeff A. Gregory President, Chief Brand Strategist Brand Counsel, LLC     Branding Brilliance    www.brandcounselllc.com

Well I can see both sides of the picture. Yes, there is something to say with going to college if you continue through to say the Masters level. There is VERY little benefit to the BA or BS degree level since most of the studies are centered around rote memory. It was not until I got to grad school that I learned to THINK on my feet and it was scary as hell. I remember to this day when Professor "Shotgun" Nugent Wedding of my Advertising Stats class at the University of Illinois stopped me in the middle of reciting some thing back from his book ( I was REAL good with rote memory!) and said: You know Mr. Simpson, I seem to remember what you are telling me real well. You see I think I wrote it back about 20 years ago. Frankly I don`t give a hoot about that. I want to know what YOU think!

That scared the crap out of me. This was one of the first times that a professor wanted to know what I thought. He was not caught up in the BS of his ego because he had written the text. He wanted us to think. We all gulped and began to THINK for ourselves! That was the BEST thing that happen to me in grad school. And he was not the only professor that made me THINK! 

As for the idea that because you did not go to college you attract the lower paying clients - that`s pure BS! I will tell you that I have had several clients that NEVER went to or finished college and they were and are millionaires! I`m in the Public REALations field where my clients are mostly entrepreneurs.


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Own A Piece of History - EXCLUSIVE Lady Liberty prints at http://www.125statueofliberty.com.

Why is is pure BS? Would highly educated people trust their finances to someone who wasn`t? I doubt it - I certainly wouldn`t.

An undergrad degree is also not about simple rote memory if that`s not your intention or focus. Learning how to think critically while being exposed to a well-rounded education is not simple memory exercises.

What does usprepared.com have to do with PR?


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Jeff A. Gregory President, Chief Brand Strategist Brand Counsel, LLC     Branding Brilliance    www.brandcounselllc.com

I`m a 34 year serial entrepreneur that has many successful businesses and clients. Check out Nightline tomorrow night for the teen entrepreneurs who will probably never have to visit the doors of a college. Most college eduction for entrepreneurs is useless until you get to the grad level unless you are a BS or BA student of one of the Entrepreneur Studies programs in the colleges across the USA.

I interview the top Internet Marketing millionaires every two weeks for DEMC Ezine with close to 300,000 readers. Over 85% of them are probably NOT college grads and they earn in excess of $10,000 per month. They also have shared with me it was not until they took the entrepreneurial jump and left their Just Over Broke JOBS that they became wealthy.

We are one of the top emergency preparedness consulting firms in the USA and I wrote the best selling A Family Survival Manual for Y2K & Beyond in 1999 featured on CNN and Fox News. This had NOTHING to do with being a college grad! I learned all this on my own.


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Own A Piece of History - EXCLUSIVE Lady Liberty prints at http://www.125statueofliberty.com.

I`m not sure the college vs no college is a money argument.

While I don`t think you need a formal education in business, I do think that a formal education is invaluable. I can give you the "I went to an Ivy League school" answer ... but instead, I`ll give you another perspective. My husband recently got some crappy news at work - mandatory 6-day workweek for all salaried employees. So of course he came home and started thinking about looking for a job. Not having the benefit of college, he 1) didn`t do the rounds and rounds of interviews, so the thought of them makes him very nervous; and 2) he worked up to his level in his company, but the same level in another company requires a BS. So really college is about options in this case - the options of available jobs and opportunities I have because of my education, the school "with a name" that I went to, the alumni network I can always hit up for a job, etc.

Personally, my degree is from a school of agriculture and life sciences. Really, what does that have to do with web development? Well, first of all, I taught myself most of what I know now between classes in school. Secondly, unlike high school, I was actually inspired to think. And third, I was presented with so many opportunities to practice what I know, both through internships and on-campus jobs ... this time really was invaluable.

To add to that ... I did take one class called "Entrepreneurship for Engineers" in which I wrote a business plan for a fake high-tech startup.
The bonus of this was presenting to real VCs with an idea ... writing the plan ... etc. And meeting a guy in my class that later opened a web design house that I worked for!

I have also tossed around the idea of going back for an MBA at some point, perhaps when my baby goes into school. I`m not sure if that would offer me anything additional though - and I`d love to hear thoughts on that as well.


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That PHP Girl
Small Business Essentials
Latest Post on SUN: New Facebook Pages - First Impressions

I think it depends on what you want out of your business, and what`s your overall perspective---the size of your context.

If you`re putting a boutique together in downtown Mainsville USA, no, you don`t need formal education. You can figure out most of what to do by past experience. But if you`re going to put an international arbitrage company together, you`d likely find a higher education helpful.

Additionally, I think it depends on IQ. Innate intelligence isn`t related to education. It`s just that, innate. Plenty of people have no education at all, but a high IQ and do very well in the open marketplace. It works the other way around, too, where people with countless years of education and a low IQ routinely fail.

It mostly ends up that people with a brain typically don`t make excuses for why they`re doing anything or what`s happening to them. People with less of a mind tend to spend their lives making excuses why it isn`t their fault, it`s everything and everyone else`s fault.

I think education is mostly important in any of the hard sciences. That includes finance (math), engineering, technology, medicine, or anything else where a huge body of previously developed knowledge is critical.

Well I dont think formal business education is not necessary.
As I know most of boss of all major companies are not even graduates...so it seems success in business depends other than degrees.


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