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In a recent study, we investigated how many of the wealthiest and most influential people graduated college. We studied 11,745 U.S. leaders, including CEOs, federal judges, politicians, multi-millionaires and billionaires, business leaders and the most globally powerful men and women.
We found about 94 percent of these U.S. leaders attended college, and about 50 percent attended an elite school. Though almost everyone went to college, elite school attendance varied widely. For instance, only 20.6 percent of House members and 33.8 percent of 30-millionaires attended an elite school, but over 80 percent of Forbes' most powerful people did. For whatever reason, about twice as many senators – 41 percent – as House members went to elite schools.
For comparison, based on census and college data, we estimate that only about 2 to 5 percent of all U.S. undergraduates went to one of the elite schools in our study. The people from our study attended elite schools at rates well above typical expectations.
Why waste $150,000 on an education you could get for $1.50 in late fees at the public library?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @02:33PM
I got a STEM degree and had very poor attendance for most of my science classes.
Lecturing was not the most efficient use of my time for me to learn most of the time. Attending lectures were a luxury for me because it meant that I had enough down time (no immediate assignments or impending exams) from my other STEM and non-STEM classes that I could sit through someone explaining the topic to me. This held true for any lecture-heavy class excluding some of the upper-division/MS level courses that I was able to take in my third and fourth year.
Despite my formal education, I am more than aware that a university degree does not necessarily mean someone is not "uneducated". I got my degree because I was smart, I was motivated enough to tolerate all the bullshit requirements involved, and because I could "afford" (grants, scholarships, community college courses, and loans) a subsidized public university. Mark Twain had a nice quote on the subject along the lines of "Don't let schools interfere with your education".