Secondly a couple of them are very dubious,for example Chuck Yeager didn't attend college, but calling him self educated is a bit of a stretch as it ignores all the training and education he got in the military.
Since 'New Journalism' entered the market it has decimated colleges and universities abilities to produce journalists. Simply put, personal voice cannot be taught and paying for an education in journalism is a major waste of time that could be spent starting at the bottom. I was taken on as a reviewer at 16 as I had the ability to make my editor laugh. I was admittedly rough in the beginning, but being a combination of a fast learner and willing to learn meant I was turned around quickly and was writing the best reviews.
An editor's job is to recognize talent and save the newbie's asses along the way. Once an editor teaches a new journalist the right style and what they're looking for, any talented journalist will barely need any editing. I know by the end of my stint as a reviewer my editor basically only had to say 'yes' or 'no' to an article and I'd have it rewritten in an hour or two to how he wanted it.
If disrespecting the likes of Major General Chuck Yeager (who can still kick Chuck Norris's ass) makes you feel better about your student loans, more power to you.
A good number of people on the list are entrepreneurs, too. Even today, you can get away with having far less formal education if you strike out on your own.
I make almost all my money in IT, for which I have had no formal training of any kind. I've done free-lance programming, unix administration, network installations, etc. Some was freelance contract work. At one point, I was an employee of one of the largest mortgage securitization companies (at the time), in charge of application packaging and distribution, laptop certification and 3rd tier hardware support of the same. I am now a CTO of a smaller company. I doubt my lack of an accredited degree would prevent me from getting a job almost anywhere in the field where I was qualified.
But I never trash someone who got a traditional degree. For most people, it is necessary to get past the gatekeepers.
1700 - 1799: 18
1800 - 1899: 79
1900 - 1999: 58
Still, given the population explosion, it's unlikely that there were fewer autodidacts in the 20th century than in the 19th.
Raw data: http://pastie.org/783067
Terry Pratchett: "I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did"
I'm personally eternally grateful that I reneged from going to university. In that time I've emigrated, got married and I've worked real jobs that have given me tons of worldly experience, all of which has helped my writing immensely. All of which would never have happened at university. I would have been the same super-geek I had in highschool who was afraid to talk to any girl I didn't know. Now, I'm no longer cliched and formulaic . . . which I suppose is a great place to be for any writer!
Whether or not that ends up being true is something else, but I tend to believe that you get out of a good university what you put into it.
In this blog post, the argument is that bigger companies hire people with college degrees precisely because it's a pointless hazing ritual. Granted, that isn't applicable to startups, but there is a reason for a lot of companies to only hire people with college degrees.
CEO's without college education http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/766831.html
Wanted: CEO, no Ivy required http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-06-cover-ceos_x....
...seems like a bachelor's degree is a requirement for big company management.
Pretty funny if you ask me.
We all love identifying with famous people that we admire, but make no mistake: these people all lived very different lives, and each had a host of reasons why apparent lack of credentials did not get in the way of their notoriety which are unique to them. Reasons which you cannot conjure just by reading a list.
Some were born at the right time or to the right parents. Some had extraordinary luck. Some spent most of their lives languishing in obscurity, poverty, misery, or Actual Work. Some were in fact quite well-educated, if not college graduates. Joseph Campbell actually had an M.A. from Columbia. George Washington had family connections and owned slaves. Eric Hoffer spent his whole life doing manual labor. These things are relevant to framing the relationship between their self-education and notoriety.
You're not worthless without a degree, but neither are you Einstein, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Tesla, or Benjamin Franklin, and you won't become more like them by hearing about their accomplishments again. Maybe most people understand that, but I've fallen into that trap enough times over the years to want to post a warning where I can.
I had started to get into this in my comment but left it out for the sake of clarity, because my point, ultimately, is as I said: there isn't much to learn from reading a list like this.
If you want to become a doctor, yes, you need all the credentials that society requires. But if you just want to help people get healthier, there are many paths to such a goal. I considered becoming a physical therapist when I was a teen. But I did an informational interview and concluded they didn't really do what I was imagining. A lot of people have fantasies about some career or other only to find it doesn't really do what they had imagined. Tragically, for many people this realization comes after investing a lot of time, money and effort into getting the requisite education, experience and credentials. At that point, a lot of people feel stuck: They have student loans to pay off and can't make enough money doing something else to pay them.
I was interested in this question (concerning credentials and success) in part because I homeschooled my kids. I always told them that they would have no king's stamp to make the gold good, therefore they actually had to be gold -- ie they have to be able to Bring It. They are fine with that.
