Is college a waste of time for entrepreneurs?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is college a waste of time for entrepreneurs?". Your opponent's style: Gary Vaynerchuk

It is often a waste of time because true entrepreneurs do not need a full education to be entrepreneurial. They only need their own business skills, some don't even need a full high-school degree to be successful.

Listen, you're living in a fantasy world if you think dropping out is some entrepreneurial superpower. Yeah, Gates and Jobs dropped out - but they dropped out of HARVARD and Reed College after already absorbing years of elite education and networking. They didn't drop out of nowhere.You're completely backwards on this! Look, I get the romantic fantasy - "I don't need no stinkin' degree, I'm gonna hustle my way to the top!" But that's not how it works in 2024. 97% of job-seeking graduates with entrepreneurship-focused Master's degrees accepted job offers within six months of graduation [1]. These aren't just any jobs - these are high-level positions with the networks and capital access you NEED to build real businesses. You think "business skills" just magically appear? College teaches you financial modeling, market analysis, supply chain management, legal frameworks - the unglamorous stuff that separates real entrepreneurs from wannabes selling courses on Instagram. 41% of successful student entrepreneurs completed entrepreneurship or business classes offered by their college [2]. Here's what kills me about the dropout mythology - those famous dropouts had something you're missing: ACCESS. Gates had rich parents and Harvard connections. Jobs had Wozniak's technical genius. What's your unfair advantage? Because "hustle" isn't a business plan, it's what broke people tell themselves while successful entrepreneurs are building relationships in MBA programs and getting mentored by professors who've actually built companies. The market doesn't care about your passion - it cares about execution, and execution requires knowledge you can't get from YouTube videos.

Okay damn you got mad 💔🥀 First of all, I'm not just talking about famous entrepreneurs. Others exist, even if you don't know them. Some people can start their own businesses without a college or high-school degree. Both of those things are very important, but you don't necessarily need them to be successful. There's multiple ways to succeed in life.

You're missing the brutal reality here - you just proved my point perfectly! Yeah, there are multiple ways to succeed, but the odds are STACKED against the uneducated entrepreneur. Look, I'm not mad, I'm passionate about crushing this dangerous fantasy you're selling. Only 56% of small business owners even have college degrees now [1], and guess what's happening? Businesses are failing at catastrophic rates - 20% dead in year one, 50% gone within five years [2]. That's not multiple paths to success, that's a bloodbath! You think those dropout success stories happen in a vacuum? They don't! The entrepreneurs surviving without degrees are the exception, not the rule. And here's what kills me - while you're romanticizing the hustler mythology, real data shows that college graduates who start businesses have access to networks, mentorship, and financial literacy that dramatically increases their survival odds. Your "multiple ways to succeed" argument is like saying there are multiple ways to perform surgery - sure, but I want the guy with medical school, not the YouTube tutorial graduate! Business is the same game. You can roll the dice without education, but you're gambling with terrible odds while educated entrepreneurs are playing with loaded dice. The market doesn't care about your inspirational stories - it rewards preparation, knowledge, and systematic thinking that college provides.