You don't have to go to college to be a success. Don't get me wrong, college will help you get a job and many times even more money but don't let a lack of a college degree keep you from being successful. Here are just a few people who have become famous and/or successful without graduating from college and/or high school including some of my personal favorites in red.

• S. Daniel Abraham, billionaire founder of Slim-Fast. Joined the Army at the age of 18 and fought in Europe during World War II. Did not attend college.
• Roman Abramovich, richest man in Russia, billionaire. Dropped out of college. He studied at the Moscow State Auto Transport Institute before taking a leave of absence from academics to go into business. He later earned a correspondence degree from the Moscow State Law Academy
• Ansel Adams, photographer. Dropped out of high school.
• Gautam Adani, commodities billionaire from India. Dropped out of college.
• Sheldon Adelson, billionaire casino owner. Dropped out of City College of New York to become a court reporter. He made his first fortune doing trade shows.
• Mortimer Adler, author, educator, editor. Left high school at the age of 15 to work. Later received his high school equivalency degree and attended Columbia University.
• Ferran Adria, chef. Has been called the world’s greatest chef. Did not finish high school.
• Miguel Adrover, fashion designer. High school dropout.
• Dennis Albaugh, billionaire founder of pesticide company Albaugh Inc. Earned a 2-year agriculture business degree from Des Moines Community College. Did not continue on to a 4-year degree.
• Edward Albee, playwright. Dropped out of Trinity College after three semesters.
• Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, founder of Xiant software, owner of Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers. Dropped out of Washington State to start up Microsoft with Bill Gates.
• Steven-Elliot Altman, author. Left school at the beginning of the 10th grade and ran away from home. Entered college at the age of 16 and earned a degree at 19.
• Dhirubhai Ambani, billionaire Indian businessman. High school dropout.
• Wally “Famous” Amos, multimillionaire cookie entrepreneur, author, talent agent. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Air Force.
• Hans Christian Andersen, short story author, fairy tales. Left home at the age of 14 to find work. Later attended Copenhagen Univesity.
• Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace. A high school dropout.
• Walter Anderson, publisher, editor. High school dropout who later earned an equivalency degree.
• Peter Arnell, advertising executive. Never attended college. Talked his way into the advertising business after graduating from high school.
• Brooke Astor, wealthy socialite, author, philanthropist. Dropped out of high school.
• John Jacob Astor, multimillionaire businessman. America’s first multimillionaire. High school dropout.
• Jane Austen, novelist. She and her sister attended schools in Oxford, Southampton, and Reading until the age of 11. After that time, their father taught them at home. Did not attend college.
• Richard Avedon, photographer. High school dropout.
• Jimmy Santiago Baca, poet, activist, and filmmaker. At a young age, he ran away from the orphanage and lived on the streets, spending some time in juvenile detention centers. Before he was imprisoned for seven years for a narcotics conviction (a charge he’s denied), he was functionally illiterate. During his time in prison, he taught himself to read and write, eventually earning a GED. Baca has written ten books of poetry, a memoir, a book of essays, a book of short stories, a play, and a screenplay for the 1993 film Bound by Honor.
• Steve Ballmer, billionaire chief of Microsoft. Graduated from college, but dropped out of the Stanford MBA program to join Microsoft.
• Hubert Howe Bancroft, historian, bookseller. High school dropout.
• Ronald Baron, billionaire money manager, founder of Baron Capital. Dropped out of George Washington University law school to pursue a career on Wall Street.
• John Bartlett, author and publisher, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Did not attend college, but ended up owning the University Bookstore at Harvard University.
• Donald Barthelme, bestselling short story author, college professor, museum director, newspaper reporter. “After experimenting with college, journalism, and marriage in Houston, he got sick of the provinces and lit out for New York City at 31.” (Time magazine). Although he continued to take classes at the University of Houston after serving in the army, he never received a degree.
• Bill Bartman, billionaire businessman, author. High school dropout.
• Eike Batista, billionaire mining executive. Studied matallurgy at the University of Aachen, Germany. Dropped out of college. Now one of the top 10 richest men in the world.
• Warren Beatty, Oscar-winning director, actor, producer, and screenwriter. Dropped out of Northwestern University after his freshman year to attend Stella Adler’s Conservatory of Acting. Beatty is one of the few people ever to receive Oscar nominations in the Best Picture, Actor, Directing and Writing categories from a single film (he did it twice for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
• Anne Beiler, multimillionaire co-founder of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels restaurants. High school dropout.
• Robert Bergman, portrait photographer. Dropped out of the University of Minnesota.
• Irving Berlin, Oscar-winning songwriter, composer. When his father died when he was 8 years old, he had to work to survive. Wrote such long-lasting hits as God Bless America, White Christmas, There’s No Business Like Show Business, etc.
• Carl Bernstein, Watergate reporter, Washington Post. Never finished college. Started as a copy boy at the Washington Star at the age of 16.
• Luc Besson, French director, screenwriter, and producer. Dropped out of high school. Never attended college.
• Robert Bisson, founder, EarthWater Global. Had about four years of college spread over seven universities, but he never earned an undergraduate degree.
• Timonthy Blixseth, billionaire founder of Yellowstone Club. Skipped college, failed as a professional songwriter. Made his first fortune as a timberland investor. At the age of 15, he bought 3 donkeys for $75 and resold them a week later as pack mules.
• Sonny Bono, singer, actor, songwriter, U.S. congressman. Dropped out of high school.
• Ray Bradbury, science fiction author. Never went to college. “I never went to college. I went to the library.”
• Richard Branson, billionaire founder of Virgin Music, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and other Virgin enterprises, balloonist. Left high school when he was 16.
• Ralph Braun, founder of BraunAbility, inventor of battery-powered scooters and wheelchair lifts. Attended college at Indiana State for a year, but dropped out.
• Sergey Brin, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend’s garage. He did eventually earn a masters degree.
• Edgar Bronfman Jr., billionaire heir to the Seagram liquor fortune. Skipped college to pursue a career as a songwriter and movie producer, but soon began running the Seagram corporation.
• Herbert Brown, Nobel Prize-winning chemist. Dropped out of high school to support his family. Later return to school and graduated from high school and college.
• Margaret “Molly” Brown, socialite, philanthropist, social activist, survivor of the Titanic. High school dropout. V. V. Brown, singer. After attending a top-line prep school, she left England at the age of 18 to got to Los Angeles to make an album. Later returned to England but never went to college.
• Warren Buffett, billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania after two years. But later he did get his bachelor’s degree and MBA.
• Ronald Burkle, billionaire supermarket owner and investor, Yucaipa. Dropped out of California State Polytechnic University and returned home to work in a Stater Brothers grocery store. Had started early stocking shelves; joined union local as a box boy at age 13.
• Robert Byrd, U.S. senator. Graduated from high school but could not afford to attend college.
• James Francis Byrnes, U.S. representative, U.S. senator, Supreme Court justice, U.S. secretary of state, South Carolina governor. At the age of 14, he left St. Patrick’s Catholic school to apprentice in a law office. Never attended college or law school.
• Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S. representative and senator. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Air Force, where he earned his GED. Later attended and graduated from San Jose State College.
• Jack Cardiff, cinematographer. His formal education was spotty because his family moved every week or so. He started in the movie business as a gofer and later graduated to camera work.
• John Carmack, founder of Armadillo Aerospace, cofounder of Id Software (sold 10 million copies of Dome and Quake games). At the age of 14, he was sent to a juvenile home after breaking into a school to steal an Apple II computer. Quit college early to become a game programmer.
• Andrew Carnegie, industrialist and philanthropist. Elementary school dropout. Started work at the age of 13 as a bobbin boy in a textile mill. One of the first mega-billionaires in the U.S.
• Scott Carpenter, astronaut. He twice flunked out of the University of Colorado.
• Julia Carson, U.S. congress representative, did not graduate from college. She was the first woman and first African American to represent Indianapolis.
• Amon G. Carter, multimillionaire oilman, civic promoter, newspaper publisher, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Never finished eighth grade.
• Maverick Carter, CEO of LRMR. Didn’t finish his sports management degree at Western Michigan University. Instead, he apprenticed for a year and a half under a basketball senior director.
• Tom Carvel, inventor of the soft-serve ice cream machine, founder of Carvel ice cream stores. Did not attend college. Before he began selling ice cream, he was an auto mechanic, Dixieland band drummer, and test driver for Studebaker.
• Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com. Founded the blog website when he was 19. Retired from active blogging three years later.
• John Catsimatidis, billionaire oilman and real estate magnate. Studied engineering at NYU but dropped out to help a friend save his family’s supermarket business. Owned 10 stores of his own by the age of 24 with $25 million per year in income. During college, he “did not study much. Would not tell my kids that.”
• Bruce Catton, historian, editor of American Heritage, author. World War I interrupted his studies at Oberlin College. He tried twice after the war to finish college but kept getting pulled away by real jobs at a succession of newspapers.
• Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel. Started the company when he was a high school senior. Never attended college.
• Gurbaksh Chahal, multimillionaire founder of online ad networks Click Again and BlueLithium. Dropped out of school at the age of 16 to found Click Again.
• Lee Clow, global director of media arts, TBWA\Worldwide. A college dropout.
• Winston Churchill, British prime minister, historian, artist. Rebellious by nature, he generally did poorly in school. Flunked sixth grade. After he left Harrow, he applied to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, but it took him three times before he passed the entrance exam. He graduated 8th out of a class of 150 a year and a half later. He never attended college.
• Joe Cirulli, founder of GHFC, a multimillion dollar fitness club company. After two years at Corning Community College, he decided to take a year off and travel around the country. Ended up following his girlfriend to Gainesville, Florida, where he started his live in health and fitness.
• James H. Clark, billionaire founder of Silicon Graphics and co-founder of Netscape. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 and entered the Navy. Later took night classes and attended the University of New Orleans, where he earned a Master’s degree in physics. He eventually earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah.
• Grover Cleveland, U.S. president. Dropped out of school to help his family. Studied law while clerking at a law firm.
• Paulo Coelho, songwriter, bestselling novelist. Was institutionalized from age 17 to 20. He later enrolled in law school but dropped out after one year, became a hippie, traveled the world,and later worked as a songwriter before writing his first novel. His
  novel The Alchemist has sold more than 60 million copies.
• Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent. He left the State University of New York at Buffalo for one year and then left. As he noted, “Were I to have to redo high school, I would just drop out immediately.”
• Patrick Collison, software wizard. Dropped out of MIT during his freshman year to help two friends develop and eventually sell Auctomatic for millions of dollars.
• Christopher Columbus, explorer, discover of America. Little formal education. Home schooled.
• Christine Comaford-Lynch, founder of Artemis Ventures (venture capital firm) and Mighty Ventures. Dropped out of high school. Later also dropped out of the University of California at San Diego and UCLA. Dabbled as a model, trained as a geisha, spent years as a Buddhist monk, dated Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. She is the author of Rules of Renegades.
• Jack Kent Cooke, billionaire media mogul, owner of Washington Redskins football team. Dropped out of high school.
• James Fenimore Cooper, novelist. Was kicked out of college for a prank.
• Simon Cowell, TV producer, music judge, American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, and The X Factor. A member of Forbes 2008 Celebrity 100, he made $72 million in 2007. He dropped out of school at the age of 16.
• James M. Cox, newspaper publisher, 3-term governor of Ohio, presidential nominee in 1920, founded Cox Enterprises. A high school dropout.
• Davy Crockett, frontiersman, U.S. congressman. Less than six months of formal education. Home schooled.
• Roy Cullen, oilman billionaire. Dropped out of fifth grade.
• Charles Culpeper, multimillionaire owner and CEO of Coca Cola. Dropped out of high school
• Sharon Daniels, author, The World of Truth. “Eventually I came to conclude that I could not find real knowledge in academic life, only hierarchies of knowledge that led, ultimately, to more hierarchies, not to more knowledge. I began to see university learning as limited, human, and relative. What was seen as absolutely up-to-date did not consider the infinite and timeless.”
• Fred N. Davis III, political advertising copywriter and director. Attended drama school in college but never graduated. Left school to take over his family’s PR business in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• Dorothy Day, journalist, socialist, political activist, pacifist, anarchist, suffragist. Co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship, but dropped out after two years to move to New York City to become a social activist.
• John Paul DeJoria, billionaire co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems hair care products and founder of Patron Spirits tequilla. Joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school. After the Navy, he spent time doing many odd jobs, sometimes living out of a car, before finding an entry-level marketing job with Time magazine.
• Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, billionaire, among top ten wealthiest Americans. Founded his company out of his college dorm room. Dropped out of the University of Texas to run the company.
• Felix Dennis, multimillionaire magazine publisher, Maxim, Blender, and others. Left home before his sixteenth birthday and dropped out of art college. The bottom line is that if I did it, you can do it. I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital but making many errors along the way. I went from being a pauper, a hippie dropout on the dole, living in a crummy room without the proverbial pot to piss in, without even the money to pay the rent, without a clue as to what to do next… to being rich. — Felix Dennis, magazine publisher, How to Get Rich
• Richard Desmond, billionaire publisher. Dropped out of high school.
• Richard DeVos, billionaire co-founder of Amway (now Alticor), owner of Orlando Magic basketball team. Served in the Army after high school. Founded Amway along with his best friend Jay Van Andel.
• Maria Diaz, CEO and founder of Pursuit of Excellence. Dropped out of college as a recent widow to work three jobs and care for her son. Later worked for Jenny Craig. Then set up a coaching practice that led to founding Pursuit of Excellence.
• Charles Dickens, bestselling novelist. Elementary school dropout.
• Barry Diller, billionaire, Hollywood mogul, Internet maven, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp (owner of Ask.com, Ticketmaster, CitySearch, Evite, LendingTree.com, etc.). The son of a wealthy real estate developer, he attended Beverly Hills High School but dropped out of UCLA to work in the mail room of William Morris.
• Walt Disney, producer, director, screenwriter, animator, developer of Disneyland. Winner of 26 Oscars and 7 Emmy awards. While attending McKinley High School, he also took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to join the army. Rejected because he was under aged, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to war in Europe. Upon his return from war, he began his artistic career.
• Francis Drake, British admiral and explorer. Home schooled.
• Tom Dwan, millionaire online poker player. Dropped out of Boston University. He started with a $50 investment and built it into millions playing poker online.
• Johnny Earle, founder of Johnny Cupcakes. Dropped out of music school to sell limited-edition T-shirts out of the trunk of his ’89 Camry.
• George Eastman, multimillionaire inventor and founder of Kodak. High school dropout.
• Clint Eastwood, Oscar-winning actor, director, and producer. Attended at least half a dozen schools and excelled at none of them. Enrolled at Los Angeles City College, but never graduated. Among other jobs, he bagged groceries, delivered papers, fought forest fires, and dug swimming pools. Also worked as a steelworker and logger.
• Thomas Edison, multimillionaire inventor of the phonograph, light bulb, and many other inventions. He quit formal schooling after his teacher called him addled. Was home-schooled by his mother.
• William Eggleston, photographic artist. A major retrospective of his work opened in November, 2008, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He attended Vanderbilt and the University of Mississippi without graduating. At Ole Miss, he did study painting which eventually led to his interest in artistic photography.
• Larry Ellison, billionaire co-founder of Oracle software company. Dropped out of the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois.
• Queen Elizabeth II, queen of England. Tutored at the palace. Did not attend school.
• Philip Emeagwali, supercomputer scientist. High school dropout: left school in native Nigeria due to war but later earned an equivalency degree. Won a scholarship to Oregon College of Education but transferred after one year to Oregon State University.
• Tom Epperson, novelist and screenwriter. After taking some classes at Henderson State University in Arkansas, he dropped out and headed for New York City to become a novelist. Four years later, he headed to Los Angeles to write screenplays.
• Shawn Fanning, developer of Napster. Dropped out of Northeastern University when 19 to move to Silicon Valley to further develop Napster.
• William Faulkner, Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelist. Dropped out of high school after his second year. Also later attended but dropped out of the University of Mississippi.
• Arash Ferdowsi, cofounder, DropBox.com. Dropped out of MIT to start up DropBox.com.
• Craig Ferguson, late night talk show host. As he noted recently, “Economists are saying that a college degree may not be necessary to succeed in life. Look at me, I didn’t go to college and here I am. Seriously kids, go to college.”
• Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies. Founded the company when she was a 21-year-old mother with no business experience. Did not graduate from college.
• Millard Fillmore, U.S. president. Six months of formal schooling. Studied law while a legal clerk for a judge and law firm. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• David Filo, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo! Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo!
• Carly Fiorina, CEO, Hewlett-Packard. Disappointed her parents by dropping out of law school after one semester.
• Bobby Fischer, Grandmaster chess player. A high school dropout.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist. Dropped out of Princeton University.
• Henry Ford, billionaire founder of Ford Motor Company. Received only a modest rural education. Left his home on the farm to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, Michigan. Later ran a sawmill and became a chief engineer for Edison Illuminating Company before starting the Ford Motor Company.
• Henry Ford II, CEO, Ford Motor Company. Dropped out of Yale University.
• Charles Forman, founder of iminlikewithyou social networking website. Left home when he was 18 to work in Korea and Japan as a programmer.
• Andrew Fox, Internet entrepreneur, multi-millionaire. A high school dropout.
• Dick Francis, novelist, jockey. Never graduated from high school because his father, as noted by the London Times, felt “that a day’s hunting or show jumping was more valuable” than formal schooling.
• Benjamin Franklin, inventor, scientist, inventor, diplomat, author, printer, publisher, politician, patriot, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Dropped out of Boston Latin. Home schooled with less than two years of formal education.
  Joe Frazier, heavyweight boxing champion. Never finished high school. Left home at the age of 15 to go to New York City.
• Markus Frind, software programmer, multimillionaire founder of Plenty of Fish dating website. Graduated from technical school with a two-year degree in computer programming. Did not attend any further higher education.
• R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, visionary, philosopher, poet, architect, futurist. He never finished college, after being expelled from Harvard twice (one involving some chorus girls).
• J. B. Fuqua, industrialist, philanthropist. Never attended college, but learned about business by checking out books from the Duke University library through the mail. Later donated $36 million to support a business school at Duke.
• Bill Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, one of the richest men in the world, philanthropist. Dropped out of Harvard after his second year. As he noted, “I realized the error of my ways and decided I could make do with a high school diploma.”
• David Geffen, billionaire founder of Geffen Records and co-founder of DreamWorks. Dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin after his freshman year. Also flunked out of Brooklyn College. Admittedly, “I was a lousy student.” Started work by sorting mail at the William Morris Agency.
• Alan Gerry, billionaire cable TV executive, philanthropist. Dropped out of high school during World War II to join the Marines. Trained as a TV repairman on the GI bill. Launched his cable business with $1,500 in 1956.
• J. Paul Getty, billionaire oilman, once the richest man in the world. Failed to graduate from the University of Southern California, Berkley, or Oxford University.
• Amadeo Peter Giannini, multimillionaire founder of Bank of America. High school dropout.
• William Gibson, science fiction novelist, first to use the word cyberspace. Was orphaned at the age of 18. To avoid the draft and the war in Vietnam, he moved to Canada where he worked odd jobs. Years later he finally finished his first novel, Neuromancer. Never attended college.
• Daniel Gilbert, psychology professor at Harvard University. Dropped out of high school but later earned an equivalency diploma.
• John Glenn, astronaut, U.S. senator. Did not finish at Muskingum College in Ohio. According to Wikipedia, “In April 1959, despite the fact that Glenn failed to earn the required college degree, he was assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as one of the original group of Mercury astronauts.”
• Hyman Golden, multimillionaire cofounder of Snapple. A high school dropout and one-time window washer.
• Barry Goldwater, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He dropped out of the University of Arizona after one year to take over the family department store.
• Bob Goodson, CEO, YouNoodle.com. Dropped out of Oxford University where he was studying for a master’s degree in medieval literature and philosophy.
• W.T. Grant, multimillionaire founder of W.T. Grant department store chain. High school dropout.
• Horace Greeley, newspaper editor and publisher, U.S. congressman, presidential candidate, co-founder of the Republican Party. Dropped out of high school.
• David Green, billionaire founder of Hobby Lobby, religious philanthropist. Did not attend college. Started the Hobby Lobby chain with a $600 loan.
• Mart Green, multimillionaire founder of Mardel retail stores, CEO of Bearing Fruit Communications (aka EthnoGraphic Media), CEO and executive producer for Every Tribe Entertainment, chairman of the board of Oral Roberts University. Dropped out of college after one year. Founded Mardel at the age of 19.
• Philip Green, billionaire retail mogul, Topshop. Dropped out of high school to apprentice with a shoe importer.
• Aviv Hadar, CEO of Think Brilliant web-development studio and the tech brains behind SoulPanckage. Dropped out of college.
• Thomas Haffa, billionaire German media mogul. Dropped out of high school.
• Joyce C. Hall, founder of Hallmark. Started selling greeting cards at the age of 18 while living at a YMCA in Kansas City. Did not attend college.
• Harold Hamm, billionaire oil wildcatter, Continental Resources, Hiland Holdings. Left home at the age of 17, finished school a year later. Became a gas jockey before becoming a wildcatter. Never attended college.
• Elizabeth Hardwick, literary critic and co-founder of The New York Review of Books. Graduated from the University of Kentucky but dropped out of a Columbia University doctoral program.
• Martha Matilda Harper, business entrepreneur, founder of the Harper Hair Salons. At the age of seven, she was sent to work as a domestic servant. Worked as a servant for 22 years before saving enough money to start a hair salon. Never attended college.
• Sheldon Harvey, Navajo artist, winner of the Best of Show at the 2008 Santa Fe Indian Market. Dropped out of high school to care for his wife and son. “When I dropped out of school, no one in my family thought it was the end of the world. My grandparents were from the old school, traditional people who didn’t think an education was necessary to make your way in the world.” He later convinced the people at Dine Community College to let him attend even though he had not graduated from high school. He took classes there but apparently did not graduate.
• Leif Hauge, inventor. Never finished college.
• Louise Hay, one of the bestselling authors in history and founder of Hay House. Of other famous women authors, Levine Breaking News has noted, “They did not change the spiritual landscape of America and several of its Western allies. They were not pregnant at 15 and they did not lack high-school diplomas.” Louise Hay did.
• William Randolph Hearst, newspaper publisher and movie producer, was thrown out of Harvard for poor grades (apparently due to heavy partying).
• Richard Heckmann, billionaire investor, CEO of U.S. Filter, founder of Heckmann Corporation. Went to college in Hawaii but did not graduate. “I went to Vietnam in ’65 and was assigned to the 33rd Air Rescue Squadron. When I came back in ’66, I wasn’t in any mood to go back to school. I got a job selling insurance.” He later attended the Harvard Business School small-company management program.
• Diane Hendricks, billionaire co-founder of ABC Supply, the largest supplier of roofing and siding materials to contractors. Never attended college.
• Kenneth Hendricks, billionaire co-founder of ABC Supply, the largest supplier of roofing and siding materials to contractors. Dropped out of high school, never attended college, and eventually joined the family roofing company.
• Kevin Hendricks, roofing store operator. Skipped college to go into the roofing business. His high school graduation present was $100, a nail bag, and a roofing hammer. Later, he turned a money-losing store into ABC Supply’s biggest profit center.
• Patrick Henry, Virginia governor, revolutionary patriot. Home schooled. Later studied on his own and became a lawyer.
• Tony Hillerman, mystery novelist. In 1943, he dropped out of college to enter the army. He later returned to college to get his degree and also earn a master’s degree.
• Stanley Ho, billionaire casino operator, King of Gambling. Dropped out of college.
• Lillian Hochberg, founder of Lillian Vernon catalog. Did not attend college. Started the catalog out of her home.
• Eric Hoffer, longshoreman, philosopher, and author. A self-educated philosopher, he was at various times a dishwasher, lumberjack, gold prospector, migrant farm worker, and longshoreman. He is author of The True Believer, Working and Thinking at the Waterfront, and Reflections on the Human Condition.
• Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind churches and author of The Science of Mind, ended his formal schooling when he was fifteen.
• John Hughes, director, producer, and screenwriter. Dropped out of Arizona State University in his junior year.
• D. L. Hughley, sales manager, actor, comedian. Never finished high school. He got his job as a sales manager by paying “a guy I knew at Cal State Long Beach $100 to tell personnel that I was just a few credits short of graduating from college.”
• H. Wayne Huizenga, billionaire founder of WMX garbage company, builder of Blockbuster video chain, owner of Miami Dolphins. Skipped college to join the Army. Later dropped out of Calvin College after three semesters. Started business in 1962 with a used garbage truck.
• Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, billionaire oilman. Only had a fifth grade education. Worked as a farmhand until he invested $50 in an Arkansas oil field.
• Gary Hustwit, author and publisher, Incommunicado Press. Dropped out of San Diego State.
• Andrew Jackson, U.S. president, general, attorney, judge, congressman. Orphaned at 14. Home schooled. By the age of 35 without formal education, he became a practicing attorney. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Jane Jacobs, author, political activist, urban planner. After high school, she worked at a variety of office jobs and as a freelance writer. She studied for two years at Columbia University’s extension school, but did not graduate.
• Micky Jagtiani, billionaire retailer, Landmark International. Flunked several exams and dropped out of accounting school in London. Started out cleaning hotel rooms and driving a taxi. Eventually started a retail business in the Middle East.
• T. D. Jakes, pastor, bestselling novelist. Dropped out of high school.
• Betty Mattas James, CEO, James Industry. Named the Slinky toy. Member of the Toy Industry Hall of Fame. She attended Pennsylvania State University but left when she married Richard James, who later invented the Slinky. More than 300 million Slinkies have been sold.
• Josh James, multimillionaire co-founder of Omniture. Dropped out of Brigham Young University during his final semester to co-found MyComputer.com, which became Omniture.
• Peter Jennings, news anchor, ABC’s World News Tonight. Failed the 10th grade. Left high school at 16 to work as a bank teller. He later attributed his failure in high school to boredom and laziness.
• Steve Jobs, billionaire co-founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation; Disney’s largest shareholder. Dropped out of Reed College after six months and went to India before returning to Silicon Valley. As he said, “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how college was going to help me figure it out.”
• John Johannesson, founder of Bauger Group fashion retailing group, finished Commercial College in Iceland (the equivalent of something between high school and junior college in the U.S.) and then launched a discount grocery with his father.
• Andrew Johnson, U.S. president, vice-president. Never attended college. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Bruce Johnson, cosmetologist and owner of Avatar Salon & Wellness Spa. Dropped out of the University of Maryland 26 credits shy of an engineering degree to study cosmetology. “I wasn’t loving engineering. I was just doing it. … I don’t think I would have been as stimulated by a career in engineering. I wanted to be happy and successful,” he says. “You’re not supposed to leave college. It was a struggle. But my heart was in this.” Now his clients include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
• Kenny Johnson, founder of Dial-A-Waiter restaurant delivery service. Dropped out of Wichita State University.
• Alan Jones, founder of Check Into Cash, former CEO of Credit Bureau Services. Dropped out of Tennessee State University to work at his father’s credit agency.
• John Paul Jones, patriot, navy admiral. Home schooled. Went to sea early.
• Henry J. Kaiser, multimillionaire founder of Kaiser Aluminum. High school dropout.
• Rob Kalin, founder of Esty (a website that helps artisans sell handmade crafts and clothing). Flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. His professors were so impressed that they helped him get into NYU where he learned out to build a website. Founded Esty with two classmates.
• Jeffrey Kalmikoff, cofounder and chief creative officer of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.
• Dean Kamen, multimillionaire inventor of the Segway. Dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
• Ingvar Kamprad, billionaire founder of IKEA, one of the richest people in the world. A dyslexic, he never attended college. When he was 17, his father gave him a reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish what became IKEA. As a child, he peddled matches, Christmas decorations, fish, and other sundries via his bicycle.
  
• Garson Kanin, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, memoirist, director. A high school dropout.
• David Karp, founder of Tumblr. Dropped out of Bronx Science at the age of 15 to be homeschooled and work for his Davidville company. Did not attend college. At the age of 17, he moved to Japan and worked remotely for an American Internet company.
• Li Ka-Shing, billionaire, one of the wealthiest investors in Asia, plastics manufacturer, real estate investor. Had to leave school at the age of 15 to support his family after his father’s death.
• Byron Katie, spiritual leader and author. Dropped out of the University of Northern Arizona before the end of freshman year to get married.
• Ben Kaufman, 21-year-old serial entrepreneur, founder of Kluster (a virtual forum that allows consumers and businesses to collaborate on the design of products and services). Dropped out of college in his freshman year.
• Brad Kelley, billionaire landowner. Never attended college.
• Kirk Kerkorian, billionaire investor and casino operator, owner of MGM movie studio, Mirage Resorts, and Mandalay Bay Resorts. An eighth-grade dropout who trained fighter pilots during World War II.
• Jared Kim, founder of WeGame. Dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley halfway through the spring semester of his freshman year to devote himself full-time to starting the online gaming site WeGame.
• Bruce Kovner, billionaire hedge fund operator, founder of Caxton Associates, chairman of Julliard. Dropped out of a Ph.D. economics program at Harvard to drive a taxi in New York City.
• Ray Kroc, multimillionaire founder of McDonald’s. High school dropout.
• Peter La Haye, Sr., inventor of plastic replacement lenses for cataract patients, owner of La Haye Laboratories and Neoptx. Dropped out of high school.
• Frederick “Freddy” Laker, billionaire airline entrepreneur. Dropped out of high school.
• Sharmen Lane, millionaire mortgage wholesaler, life coach, motivational speaker. A high-school dropout.
• Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police of Washington, DC. A 14-year-old pregnant high school dropout.
• Ring Lardner, sportswriter and short story writer. Began his career as a teenager writing for the South Bend Tribune. He continued writing for many other newspapers, eventually landing a nationally syndicated column for the Chicago Tribune.
• Albert Lasker, advertising pioneer, CEO of Lord & Thomas. After graduating from high school, he started at an advertising agency as an entry-level salesman.
• Jillian Lauren, author. Quit New York University during her freshman year to become a party guest for a wealthy Singapore businessman. Went on to live in the harem of the prince of Brunei for a year-and-a-half. Wrote about her experiences.
• Ralph Lauren, billionaire fashion designer, founder of Polo. Left the City College of New York business school (Baruch College) to design ties for Beau Brummel. Launched Polo later that same year.
• Mike Lazaridis, billionaire founder of Research in Motion. “Two months before I graduated from college, I answered a request for proposal from General Motors with a five-page pitch to develop a network computer control display system. They offered me a half-million dollar contract…. I went to the president of the university to get his permission to take a leave of absence. He tried to persuade me to finish out my year, but when I told him about the contract, he wished me the best of luck.” Since that time, he hasn’t had time to go back and finish.
• Anna-Lou “Annie” Leibovitz, portrait photographer, cover photographer for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone magazines. Attended the San Francisco Art Institute, but apparently did not graduate. As she has said, “I was very lucky, in working for these magazines, to learn by doing, but I always regretted not having a formal education. I had to teach myself.”
• Tia Leoni, actress. Dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College as a 20-year-old to model and act.
• James Leprino, billionaire, Leprino Foods. Joined family business at the age of 18. Turned business into the world’s largest mozzarella producer.
• Doris Lessing, novelist. At the age of 14, she chose to end her formal schooling. She then worked as a nanny, telephone operator, office worker, stenographer, and journalist. Her first novel was published when she was 31. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
• Joe Lewis, billionaire businessman. Dropped out of high school.
• Rush Limbaugh, multi-millionaire media mogul, the most popular radio talk show host ever. bestselling book author. Dropped out of college after being required to take ballroom dancing.
• Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished barely a year of formal schooling. He self-taught himself trigonometry (for his work as a surveyor) and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Charles Lindbergh, aviator, first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Quit the University of Wisconsin after two years to learn how to fly an airplane.
• Carl Lindner, billionaire investor, founder of United Dairy Farmers. Dropped out of high school at the age of 14 to deliver milk for the family store during the Depression.
• John Llewellyn, labor leader, president of the United Mine Workers. Dropped out of high school.
• Marcus Loew, multimillionaire founder of Loews movie theaters, co-founder of MGM movie studio. Dropped out of elementary school.
• Lindsay Lohan, actress. Never finished high school.
• Dan Lok, multi-millionaire business mentor, founder of Quick Turn Marketing. College dropout. His CreativitySucks website notes: A former college dropout, Dan Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to a multi-millionaire. Dan came to North America with little knowledge of the English language and few contacts. Today, Dan is one of the most sought-after business mentors on the Web, as well as a best-selling author. His reputation includes his title as the World’s #1 Website Conversion Expert.
• Jack London, bestselling novelist. Dropped out of high school to work. Later was admitted to the University of California but left after one semester.
• Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian president. With a fifth grade education only, he shined shoes on the streets of Sao Paulo as a kid but later became a steelworker union leader.
• Barbara Lynch, chef, owner of a $10 million group of restaurants in Boston. Dropped out of high school to be a runner for local bookies. Later worked for celebrity chef Todd English. “I started my first business venture in high school, placing bets for some of my teachers with bookies in Southie…. I never did homework. I was failing everything. Senior year, they said I would have to go to summer school. There was no way I was doing that, so I dropped out.”
• Mary Lyon, education pioneer, teacher, founder of Mount Holyoke College (America’s first women’s college). Dropped out of high school. Started teaching at the age of 17.
• John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods and developer of Conscious Capitalism. Dropped out of the University of Texas six times. Never took a business course.
• Harry Macklowe, billionaire real estate developer. Dropped out of college to become a real estate broker.
• Steve Madden, shoe designer. Dropped out of college to sell shoes on Long Island.
• Ivory Madison, comic book author and founder of the Red Room social network for authors. Dropped out of school at the age of 13. Eventually went to law school without finishing high school or attending college.
• John Major, British prime minister. High school dropout.
• Clancy Martin, ethics professor, novelist. Dropped out of high school, but later graduated from college. Dropped out of graduate school.
• Manuel Marulanda, aka Pedro Antonio Marin, leader of the revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The son of a peasant farmer, he had only a sixth-grade education.
• Robert Maxwell, billionaire publisher. Dropped out of high school.
• Craig McCaw, billionaire founder of McCaw Cellular. Dropped out of college.
• Billy Joe (Red) McCombs, billionaire founder of Clear Channel media empire, car dealerships, real estate investor. Dropped out of law school to sell cars in 1950. He owned his first automobile dealership by age 25.
• Kenneth Wayne McLeod, Ponzi schemer. After graduating from high school, he went into the insurance business. Never attended college.
  Leighton Meester, actress. Dropped out of high school after her junior year (but had enough credits to get her diploma). “I was very passionate about pursuing my acting career; as opposed to the daily routine of high school, which bored me to death. It was a chore – I wasn’t in any after-school clubs. The only thing I did after school was go to auditions.” (Seventeen magazine)
• Hendrik Meijer, founder of Meijer grocery stores. Worked as a barber during the depression. Did not attend college.
• Herman Melville, novelist, Moby Dick. High school dropout.
• Karl Menninger, psychiatrist. Dropped out of Washburn College in Kansas after two years.
• Jillian Michaels, fitness expert, reality TV star, book author. She dropped out of California State University at Northridge to be a bartender. When her boyfriend suggested she get a real job, she faked a college diploma to get a position at the ICM talent agency.
• Arthur Ernest Morgan, flood control engineer, book author, college president, director of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Left high school after three years. Later attended the University of Colorado for six weeks.
• Ed Morrisey, blogger at Captain’s Quarters and HotAir.com. “I never finished college. I attended three or four different colleges at different times for different reasons. I never did get a degree.”
• Chris Morrison, co-founder of PLP Digital Systems (software company). Earns more than $500,000 per year. Dropped out of high school.
• Dustin Moskovitz, billionaire co-founder of Facebook social network. Dropped out of Harvard.
• Charles Munger, billionaire right-hand man to Warren Buffett in Berkshire Hathaway. Dropped out of the University of Michigan to join the Air Force as a meteorologist. Later got a law degree from Harvard.
• David Murdock, billionaire investor, real estate tycoon, chairman of Dole Foods. Funding a $1.5 billion health research campus in North Carolina. Dropped out of high school. Drafted into the army in 1943.
• Justin Murdock, investor, son of David. A college dropout and goth musician.
• Ted Murphy, founder, Izea Entertainment, social media marketing company. Dropped out of Florida State University to start Think Creative ad agency.
• George Naddaff, founder of Boston Chicken and UFood Grill. Never attended college. As he put it, “School and I did not work out. So at age 17 and a half, I joined the Army.” And, when he got out of the Army, his dad said if you’re not going to college, you get a job. He did. The next day.
• Walter Nash, prime minister of New Zealand. Dropped out of high school.
• David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue airlines. Dropped out of the University of Utah after three years.
• Jack Nelson, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Never attended college. After high school, he went to work for the Biloxi Daily Herald. Later he opened the Atlanta bureau of the Los Angeles Times and later became the Times bureau chief in Washington, D.C.
• Richard John Neuhaus, theologian, Lutheran minister, Catholic priest, author, civil rights activist. He took pride in the fact that he never graduated from high school.
• Donald Newhouse, billionaire publisher, Advanced Publications. Dropped out of Syracuse University.
• Jim Newton, founder of TechShop (the nation’s first full-service gym for the tinkering crowd), science advisor for Discovery Channel’s MythBusters series. Dropped out of college.
• Jake Nickell, cofounder and CEO of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.
• Florence Nightingale, nurse. No formal education. Home schooled.
• David Ogilvy, advertising copywriter and executive. Was thrown out of Oxford University at the age of 20 in 1931 during the Great Depression. Began working as a lowly cook in a hotel restaurant. Eventually became a world-class chef. Left that job to sell upmarket kitchen stoves, which led to a job in advertising.
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, U.S. first lady, book editor. Dropped out of Vassar before eventually graduating from George Washington University.
• David Oreck, multimillionaire founder of The Oreck Corporation that builds those wonderful vacuum cleaners. When the U.S. entered World War II, he quit college to enlist in the Army Air Corps. After the war, college seemed to tame to him, so he started working as a salesman at a Manhattan appliance distributor. That job eventually led him to founding his own company.
• Amancio Ortega, fashion retailer, Spain’s richest man, billionaire. Dropped out of high school.
• George Orwell (aka Eric Blair), author of Animal Farm and 1984. Instead of attending university after graduating from Eton, he joined the Imperial Police and worked in Burma. When he returned, he worked in restaurant kitchens, slept in homeless shelters, and eventually documented the condition of miners. All the time, he was writing reviews, essays, novels, and a regular newspaper column. His Animal Farm has sold more than 10 million copies.
• Joel Osteen, TV pastor and host of the most-watched inspirational TV show in the U.S. Dropped out of Oral Roberts University after one year to care for his mother (who was recovering from cancer). Has sold more than 4 million copies of Your Best Life Now.
• Dan Panoz, founder of Panoz Auto Development car design firm. Dropped out of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Gainesville College.
• Larry Page, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend’s garage. He did earn a masters degree.
• Sean Parker, billionaire co-creator of Napster, founding president of Facebook.com. He barely finished high school (he was not interested in school).
• Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer. Dropped out of high school.
• Kevin Paul, founder of KPaul, an Inc. 500 company. Joined the army straight out of high school.
• Harvey Pekar, comic book author. Dropped out of Case Western Reserve University. His reason? He quit “when the pressure of required math classes proved too much to bear.”
• Nelson Peltz, billionaire leveraged buyout investor. Dropped out of Wharton Business School.
• Andrew Perlman, co-founder of GreatPoint. Dropped out of Washington University to start an Internet communications company, Cignal Global Communications, when he was 19.
• John Pestana, multimillionaire co-founder of Omniture. Dropped out of Brigham Young University during his final semester to co-found MyComputer.com, which became Omniture.
• James A. Pike, Episcopal bishop. Dropped out of the University of Santa Clara after his sophomore year.
• Ron Popeil, multimillionaire founder of Ronco, inventor, infomercial pitchman, and producer. Dropped out of college. He did, though, receive the Ig Nobel Award for Consumer Engineering. Inventor of the Solid Flavor Injector, Mr. Microphone, Showtime Rotisserie, and more.
• Dean Potter, climber and slack-liner. Enrolled at the University of New Hampshire and joined the rowing team, but quit soon thereafter. “I didn’t fit in,” he has said. “I wanted to destroy everybody on my team and establish my dominance, and that’s all I cared about.”
• William J. Powell, developer and owner of the Clearview Golf Club, the first U.S. golf course designed, owned, and operated by an African American; also competed in the first U.S. interracial collegiate golf match. Left Wilberforce University early because he had an enlarged heart.
• Seth Priebatsch, chief ninja of scvngr.com and founder of PostcardTech. Dropped out of Princeton University after one year.
• Bob Proctor, success speaker, bestselling author of You Were Born Rich, teacher of The Secret, and co-founder of Life Success Publishing. Went to high school for two months.
• Wolfgang Puck, chef, owner of 16 restaurants and 80 express bistros. Quit school at the age of 14 and got a job as a cooking apprentice at a hotel. When he told his father, he said, “Well, you’re good for nothing. Cooking is for women.”
• Ashley Qualls, founder of Whateverlife.com, left high school at the age of 15 to devote full time to her website business where she made more than a million dollars by the age of 17.
• Stewart Rahr, billionaire founder of Kinray pharmacy distributor, philanthropist. Graduated from New York University but later dropped out of law school in 1975 to take over family pharmacy.
• Lew Ranieri, financier, the father of mortgage-backed bonds. Dropped out of college.
• James Arthur Ray, inspirational author and speaker. Dropped out of junior college to work as a telemarketer.
• Rachael Ray, TV chef, cookbook author. Dropped out of Pace University after two years to work and save money.
• Kamilla Reid, book author. A high school dropout.
• Silvestre Reyes, U.S. representative from Texas. Got a two-year degree from El Paso Community College.
• Dane Reynolds, world class surfer, video documentarian. Dropped out of school at the age of 16 to surf, something he called “kind of a stupid decision.”
• Marc Rich, billionaire commodities investor, built Philbro into the world’s largest commodities firm, founded Marc Rich & Co. Dropped out of NYU to take a job in the mail room of Philipp Brothers on Wall Street.
• Leandro Rizzuto, billionaire founder of Conair. Dropped out of college to found Conair with a $100 investment and the invention of a hot-air hair roller invention.
• John D. Rockefeller Sr., billionaire founder of Standard Oil, philanthropist. History’s first recorded billionaire. Dropped out of high school two months before graduation. Took some courses at a local business school.
• Kjell Inge Rokke, billionaire Norwegian businessman. No secondary or college education. Started out as a fisherman at the age of 18.
• George Romney, automotive executive, Michigan governor, presidential candidate. Spent only a year at the University of Utah.
• Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president. Attended school only for a few months. Was tutored at home. Teddy eventually graduated from Harvard University but he did not complete his law degree at Columbia University.
• Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, TechTV host. Dropped out of the University of Las Vegas during his sophomore year to code software. He wrote his first software program in the second grade and was building his own machines by the beginning of high school. He started Digg with $1,200 and launched the site out of his bedroom.
• Alvin Roth, systems engineer, game theorist, book author. Dropped out of Van Buren High School (Queens, New York) during his junior year. His explanation: He was understimulated. Applied to college and graduated with an engineering degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in operations research from Stanford University.
• Karl Rove, presidential advisor. Left the University of Utah after two years to work for the college Republicans.
• J.K. Rowling, bestselling novelist (Harry Potter series), first billionaire author. Never attended college.
• Frederick Henry Royce, multimillionaire co-founder of Rolls-Royce, automotive designer. Elementary school dropout.
• Michael Rubin, founder of Global Sports. Dropped out of Villanova University after six months. He admits, “If I had to do it over again, I would have gone to college. I missed out on that. The business responsibilities weighted hard on me in my late teens and early 20s.”
• Phillip Ruffin, billionaire casino operator. Dropped out of Wichita State to flip burgers. With the money he saved, he invested in oil and real estate. Eventually got into casinos. The best day of his life? August 10, 2007. The day he put $1.24 billion into his checking account.
• Haim Saban, billionaire producer of Power Rangers TV show, owns stake in Univision and Paul Frank Industries. Never attended college.
• William Safire, columnist for the New York Times. Dropped out of Syracuse University to take a job as a researcher for a column.
• Edmond Safra, billionaire banker, philanthropist. High school dropout.
• J.D. Salinger, novelist, Catcher in the Rye (with over 60 million copies sold so far). Briefly attended Ursinus College and New York University before publishing short stories in Collier’s and Esquire.
• Carl Sandburg, poet, historian, Pulitzer Prize winner. Had little formal education but later attended Lombard College and graduated.
• Colonel Harlan Sanders, multimillionaire founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Elementary school dropout but later earned a law degree via correspondence course.
• Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Graduated from trade school and then studied literature mostly on his own.
• David Sarnoff, radio and TV producer. High school dropout.
• Vidal Sassoon, multimillionaire founder of Vidal Sassoon hairstyling salons and hair-care products. High school dropout.
• Al Schneider, founder of Schneider National freight company. Had an eighth-grade education.
• Richard Schulze, billionaire founder of Best Buy. After high school, he sold electronics for his father’s distribution company and later opened a car-stereo shop. Did not attend college.
• Doug Selsam, inventor of The Sky Serpent wind generator and heavy metal guitarist. Attended the University of California at Irvine, but never graduated.
• Drew Sementa, founder, Premier Payment Systems. Left the University of Central Florida after his junior year to join a dot-com.
  William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling.
• George Bernard Shaw, playwright, author. High school dropout.
• J. Earl Shoaff, the Millionaire Maker, never graduated from high school.
• Walter Shorenstein, billionaire real estate investor, Shorenstein Properties. Dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania. Began buying commercial property after serving in the military during World War II.
• Alan Sillitoe, novelist. He left school at the age of 14 to work in a bicycle plant.
• Russell Simmons, multi-millionaire co-founder of Def Jam records, founder Russell Simmons Music Group, creator of Phat Farm and Baby Phat fashions, foounding partner of UniRush Financial Services, creator of Global Grind website, bestselling author, movie and TV producer. Left City College of New York to begin promoting local rap music acts (which he eventually signed to his music label) and producing records.
• Maggy Simony, author of Traveler’s Reading Guide. Never attended college.
• John Simplot, billionaire potato king. Dropped out of 8th grade and left home at the age of 14. He sorted potatoes and raised hogs before saving enough money to buy his first potato field. Became a millionaire by the age of 30.
• Isaac Merrit Singer, sewing machine inventor, multimillionaire founder of Singer Industries. Dropped out of elementary school.
• Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York and presidential candidate. Left school at the age of 14 to help his family after his father died. He would later joke that he received his FFM degree from the Fulton Fish Market in New York City.
• Elinor Smith, aviatrix, the Flying Flapper. By the time she was 17, she was ferrying passengers on short hops from Roosevelt Field in Long Island. By 18, she had her own sight-seeing business. Never attended college.
• O. Bruton Smith, billionaire. “I didn’t attend college, but still had a good time. I think I probably had more fun than any human deserves a right to have.”
• Daniel Snyder, billionaire owner of Snyder Communications and Red Zone Capital, owner of the Washington Redskins. Dropped out of the University of Maryland.
• Steven Spielberg, billionaire movie director and producer, co-founder of DreamWorks. Rejected by the best film schools, he enrolled in and then dropped out of Cal State Long Beach. Received a degree in 2002.
• Hiram Stevens, engineer, inventor. Dropped out of high school.
• Edward D. Stone, architect. Dropped out of the University of Arkansas.
• W. Clement Stone, multimillionaire insurance businessman, founder of Success magazine, and author of a number of books on positive mental attitudes. At the age of six, he sold newspapers on the south side of Chicago. By the age of 13, he owned his own newsstand. He continued to work odd jobs until his mother bought a small insurance agency, where he helped her by selling insurance. At the age of 21, with $100 in his pocket, he established the Combined Registry Company insurance business which he built into a multi-million dollar business. He dropped out of elementary school but later attended high school night courses and some college.
• R.F. “Rawley” Taplett, founder of R.F. Taplett Fruit & Cold Storage Company, multi-millionaire investor. Had only a high school diploma.
• Alfred Taubman, billionaire chairman of Sotheby, real estate investor, mall operator. Dropped out of the University of Michigan. Made his first fortune investing in shopping malls.
• Jack Crawford Taylor, billionaire founder of Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Dropped out of Washington University to serve as a fighter pilot in the Navy during World War II. Sold cars after the war before starting a car leasing company.
• Zachary Taylor, U.S. president, general. Little formal schooling. Home schooled. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Timmy Teepell, chief of staff for Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. A product of home schooling, he never attended college.
• Dave Thomas, billionaire founder of Wendy’s. As a youngster his family moved around a lot. While working as a busboy at the age of 15, he refused to move once again with the family. Instead, he dropped out of high school and went to work full time in a restaurant (moving in with the family that owned the restaurant).
• Kip Tindell, founder of the Container Store. Dropped out of the University of Texas. As he noted, “I crammed a four-year program into about eight years.”
• Leo Tolstoy, count, novelist (War and Peace, Anna Karenina). Dropped out after three years at the university.
• Adam and Matthew Toren, founders of YoungEntrepreneur.com. As they noted on their website, Entrepreneurs at an early age, Matthew and I had already started six (toot toot) businesses by the time we graduated high school. We were both offered college scholarships, but turned them down – it was clear to us that college was not in our future. Within a week of graduating high school, we bought a bar/café/billiards location, which we overhauled, re-branded and turned into a hot spot; and on the 12-month we sold it for a great profit.
• Harry Truman, U.S. president. Never went to college.
• Isaac Tshuva, billionaire builder, industrialist, and hotelier. At the age of 12, he started working as a laborer to support his family while attending school at night. After three years in the army, he skipped college to begin working in construction.
• Harriet Tubman, abolitionist, former slave, humanitarian, spy, nurse, suffragist. Did not attend college. A big promoter of education even though she was illiterate.
• Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN and TBS, owner of Atlanta Braves, philanthropist, America’s largest land owner with 1.8 million acres. Was asked to leave Brown University during his fourth year. Got suspended twice, once for having a girl in his room and he doesn’t remember the second reason. “I’m down to a little more than a billion. You can get by on that if you really economize and don’t buy a lot of planes and yachts and stuff.”
• Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, bestselling novelist. Left school a year after his father’s death, never went beyond the fifth grade. Nonetheless, he still wrote the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• Jamie Tworkowski, surfer and founder of To Write Love on Her Arms. College drop-out. Also dropped out of high school but eventually went back to finish. “It wasn’t my choice to walk away from school. I was hanging around with guys older than me, and I’d skip school to play with them. I kept missing more and more school, and I got busted for it finally. But I went back. I felt like I’d be a real stooge if I didn’t at least finish high school.”
• Albert Ueltschi, billionaire founder of FlightSafety International pilot training schools. Dropped out of the University of Kentucky to follow his passion, flying planes. After flying for PanAm for ten years, he founded FlightSafety.
• Leon Uris, bestselling novelist. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Marines.
• Jay Van Andel, billionaire co-founder of Amway (now Alticor). Served in the Army after high school. Founded Amway along with his best friend Richard DeVos.
• Martin Van Buren, U.S. president. Little formal education. Began studying law at the age of 14 while apprenticing at a law firm. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Cornelius Vanderbilt, railroad magnate and one of the wealthiest Americans of the mid-1800s. Had little formal schooling. Was considered uncouth and illiterate until he became too rich to ignore.
• Anton van Leeuwenhoek, microbiologist, microscope maker, discoverer of bacteria, blood cells, and sperm cells. Dropped out of high school.
• Frank Vos, advertising executive, Frank Vos Agency. Did not finish college. But, when he retired, he sold his company and got a B.A. and M.A. in American history from Columbia University.
• Andy Wachowski, screenwriter, director, The Matrix. Dropped out of Emerson College.
• Larry Wachowski, screenwriter, director, The Matrix. Dropped out of Bard College.
• Theodore Waitt, billionaire founder of Gateway Computers. Dropped out of the University of Iowa one semester short of a degree to start Gateway with his older brother in 1985.
• Alfred Russel Wallace, naturalist, co-discover of evolutionary theory. Left school at the age of 14 to go to work to support his family. Wallace was self-taught, via frequent visits to libraries and workingman’s institutes, while working as a land surveyor, a builder, and a school teacher.
• DeWitt Wallace, founder and publisher of Reader’s Digest, philanthropist. Dropped out of Macalester College after one year. Dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley after the second year.
• Y.C. Wang, billionaire founder of Formosa Plastics. Never attended high school.
• Ty Warner, billionaire developer of Beanie Babies, hotel owner, real estate investor. Dropped out of college to go on the road selling plush toys.
• George Washington, U.S. president, general, plantation owner. Ended his education after a few years of elementary school. Of the 43 people who served as president of the United States, 8 never went to college.
• Keith Waterhouse, journalist, comic novelist, Billy Liar. Was inspired to drop out of school and become a writer after reading Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse.
• Sidney Weinberg, managing partner of Goldman Sachs, aka Mr. Wall Street. Dropped out of the seventh grade in Brooklyn.
• H.G. Wells, science fiction author. Dropped out of high school to help support his family. Eventually completed high school and went on to college.
• Leslie Wexner, billionaire founder of Limited Brands. Dropped out of Ohio State law school. Started the Limited with a $5,000 loan from an aunt.
• Dean White, billionaire hotelier and billboard magnate. Dropped out of the University of Nebraska to join the Merchant Marine Academy. Served during World War II. Then took over family business after the war and built it into a billboard and real estate empire.
• Kemmons Wilson, multimillionaire founder of Holiday Inns. Dropped out of high school.
• Woodrow Wilson, U.S. president, college president. Dropped out of Davidson College, but eventually graduated from Princeton University.
• Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief, Vogue magazine. Did not attend college.
• Steve Wozniak, billionaire co-founder of Apple. Dropped out of college.
• Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, interior designer, leader of the Prairie School of architecture. Voted as the greatest American architect of all time by the American Institute of Architects. Attended a high school in Madison, Wisconsin, but apparently never graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin as a special student and took classes part-time for two semesters. He left school without getting a degree. He left to work at an architectural firm in Chicago, Illinois.
• Orville Wright, inventor of the airplane. Dropped out of high school in his junior year to open a printing business.
• Wilbur Wright, inventor of the airplane. Completed four years of high school but never received his diploma. Did not attend college.
• Jerry Yang, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo! Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo!
• Emile Zola, French novelist. Failed his baccalaureate, which I believe is the French way of saying he did not graduate from college.
• Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook. Dropped out of Harvard to continue working on the social networking website he founded in his dorm room in 2004. Facebook has more than 500 million

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