Technology Billionaires who Dropped out of College and Who they Dated or Married
by kalyani10
A college degree is not always a surefire recipe for success. This is evident from the incredible number of college dropouts who went on to garner both professional and financial acclaim in a world which toasts Ivy League graduates. In fact according to a Forbes report 1 which tracked the education level of 234 U.S. billionaires through 1999, 41--that's 18%--never got their college diplomas and two never even finished high school. The Forbes report further digs in a study by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research, according to which a full 20% of America's millionaires never even been to college. Here is a list of millionaires who despite being college dropouts have found success, both in their professional and personal lives.
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Bill Gates
The best known college-dropout billionaire is undoubtedly Bill Gates, software mogul and cofounder of Microsoft. Gates is not only richest man in US but also the second-richest in the world. The self-made billionaire currently enjoys a net worth of US$53 billion with Microsoft shares soaring by 50% in the last year and his investment vehicle Cascade making billions in profits. However at present almost 60% of Gates’ fortune is held outside Microsoft with assets in Four Seasons Hotel, Auto Nation and Televisa.
Bill Gates chose as his life partner Melinda French of Dallas who was then working as a Microsoft manager. The two got married on New Year’s Day in 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Today the couple has three children and they live in Medina, Washington. Both Bill and Melinda Gates are actively involved in philanthropy with charitable and scientific research constituting their main areas of support. During his leisure, Bill Gates enjoys reading, playing golf, bridge and tennis.
Mark Zuckerberg
Feted as the youngest billionaire on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg at 27 is already worth $13.5 billion according to Forbes 2011 list of the super-rich. He is the co-founder and current CEO of the immensely popular social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg began Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004 and then with the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz, decided to spread it to other schools which had social contacts with Harvard like Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown and Yale. Eventually Zuckerberg and his associates moved to Palo Alto, thus leaving Harvard without a degree but moving onto a path of now-legendary success.
While Zuckerberg is still a bachelor, media reports have been abuzz with Zuckerberg’s partiality for Asian beauty Priscilla Chan over some time now. The two first met at a party put on by his fraternity during his sophomore year. In September 2010, Zuckerberg invited Chan, by then a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco to move into his rented Palo Alto house. According to media reports Zuckerberg even learnt Mandarin Chinese in preparation for the couple's visit to China in December 2010.
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Lawrence Ellison
Yet another billionaire who owes little to a college education is Lawrence Ellison, founder of the giant computer corporation Oracle. Presently, Ellison enjoys a net worth of $28 billion which shows just how far he has come from his humble beginnings when he was adopted by a grand-aunt because his single mother couldn’t afford to raise him.
Currently the 64 year-old billionaire is married to Melanie Craft, a romance novelist and has two children. This is Ellison’s fourth marriage, all the earlier three having ended in divorce. His first wife was Adda Quinn who he divorced after seven years. Next he married Nancy Wheeler in 1976 but the marriage lasted for only two years. His third wife was Barbara Boothe with whom he had a daughter too but this marriage too failed after four years. In 1998, Ellison suffered a near-death experience when his yacht, the "Sayonara," got caught in a disastrous storm during a 725–mile ocean race. The storm sank six of his competitors and left four men dead. The incident had a strong impact on Ellison and made him realize the importance of family.
Steve Jobs
Continuing with the series of college drop-outs who went on to build billion-dollar software empires is Steve Jobs. He is co-founder, chairman, and former chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Currently his net worth is $8.3 billion according to Forbes 2011 list of 400 Richest Americans. In 1972, Jobs graduated from high school and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after only one semester. Later he said at the Commencement address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005 that, " looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.”
Jobs married Laurene Powell, an entrepreneur on March 18, 1991. The couple has a son and two daughters. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; later though acknowledged paternity. Jobs is also believed to have dated American folk singer and activist Joan Baez at one time.
Michael Dell
The founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Inc is another famous college dropout who has made it big in the computer industry. Michael Saul Dell is one of the richest people in the world ranked 44 with a net worth of US$14.6 billion in 2011. After high school, he enrolled as a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin but soon started an informal business upgrading computers, selling kits and add-on components. Eventually In 1992 at the age of 27, Dell became the youngest CEO to have his company ranked in Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 corporations.
Not much is known about the personal life of Dell, an exceedingly private man. He resides in Austi, Texas with his wife, Susan, and their four children. The two are co-founders of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which focuses on children’s causes in the country and around the world.
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