Let me just add that an entrepreneurial attitude will generally bring more success than a working class attitude. Working class people do what their told, follow all the rules laid out by school/work/society. They go to school, find a job, work their way up the ladder. They can do very well for themselves but the problem is that they are basically cogs in a system. Their compensation will always be determined by the system. This is true if you are a bank teller or a jr investment banker.
Entrepreneurs seek to create new opportunities. They don’t wait around for some middle manager to decide they are worth more money and give them a token raise. They take ideas and actually make them into things. Unlike the worker bee who is basically at the mercy of their environment, the entrepreneur attempts to create his own environment.
I listen to my coworkers bitch and complain all the time. Does one of them ever say “hey! I can do a better job starting my own firm?” No. Does one of them ever try to improve anything at their current job? Nope. They complain and complain and if the boss doesn’t give them a raise for their bitching, they go to a new boss and start the cycle over again.
That’s why Bill Gates and others are rich. Because they had an idea and made it happen instead of waiting and hoping that IBM or Xerox would like their ideas and give them a high five figure/low six figure job for their troubles.
Yeah, on balance it’s always better to go for education… but of the top ten richest people in the UK, at least five did not go to university (Roman Abramovich, Richard Branson, Bernie Eccleston, Philip Green, David and Simon Reuben).
Between them they have a combined wealth of £18bn - and when you look at the rest of the list, three others inherited their wealth (Duke of Westminster, Rausing family) so university wouldn’t have made a difference.
I can’t imagine Roman Abramovich is too worried about his lack of Ivy League education - not with £7.5bn in the bank - and he began life as an orphan in the middle of Siberia.
The mistake that people make is just having the degree is a gold ticket to wealth. You don’t need to go to school if you have a good idea for a business and the knowledge and means to implement it. Problem is that most people don’t so college can be a place to get these skills.
It’s really a total package. If you go to a prestigeous school, do well, join the right clubs and make the right friends, you can come out with the skills and contacts you need to join the upper classes. If you go to a state school 20 minutes from your home town with all your high school buddies, you have a pretty good chance of remaining in that perpetual high school state.
You are making a huge assumption and generalization.
People’s motivations and paths through life are almost as varied as the number of people on this planet.
I can think of famous, and local examples on all sides of the spectrum.
About the only consistent thing I see is this: Motivation is the key to financial success. That’s it. (Plus some basic intelligence, but not much required)
As for the OP: You can become skilled at reading people, communicating, etc. whether you go to MIT or hang out in bars. Once again it has to do with an individuals motivation and goals in life.
I don’t think you can just say one thing is better than the other, it depends on the goal. If your goal is to work with the best minds in the field of Artificial Intelligence, you will more likely achieve that at MIT than a state college.
If the goal is simply to make money, then you probably need to have a few sessions with a counselor to figure out why on earth you would think that is going to make you happy in life.