Statistically speaking, those who finish college make far more money in their lifetime than those who don't, and are far less likely to be unemployed.
But there are exceptions to that rule.
On Tuesday, 21-year-old Palmer Luckey became the latest person to join the tech industry college dropout hall of fame. Luckey is the creator of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that Facebook just bought for $2 billion.
He joins a long list of college dropout heroes includingSteve Jobs, Bill Gates, Paul Allen,Michael Dell, Digg founder Kevin Rose, Napster's Shawn Fanning, and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams.
With high-profile people like venture capitalist Peter Thiel starting programs to encourage talented young entrepreneurs to skip college and start businesses, the list of young new successful college dropouts seems to be expanding, including the guy who just bought Oculus who leads Facebook.
Palmer Luckey created Oculus VR, just acquired by Facebook for $2 billion.
This week, Palmer Luckey is the latest college dropout to strike it rich. He created a virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift, which was a Kickstarter sensation, raising $2.5 million from the crowdfunding site in 2012.
His device then went on to attract big names in the gaming industry, grew into a 50-person company and raised another $91 million in venture funds, including backing from Andreessen Horowitz. (Marc Andreessen is also on the board of Facebook.)
Luckey was a self described "electronics enthusiast and maker" since high school, but he never formally studied tech. He was home schooled as a child, started taking college classes as a teen, and eventually enrolled in California State University Long Beach to pursue a degree in journalism, before dropping out to found Oculus.
Jan Koum co-founded WhatsApp bought by Facebook for $19 billion.
Jan Koum is a true rags to riches story. Days before his 38th birthday he and his co-founder, Brian Acton, sold their company, WhatsApp, to Facebook for $19 billion in cash and stock. He became a billionaire.
Koum came to the U.S. when he was just 16 years old from Kiev, Ukraine, and his family struggled, living on food stamps for a while.
Koum dropped out of San Jose State University, where he studied math and computer science, after landing a job at Yahoo, Forbes reports.
Eduardo Vivas sold two startups for $190 million by the time he turned 28.
In February, LinkedIn announced that it was acquiring a cool young startup called Bright.com for $120 million. That was a two-in-a-row hit for one of its co-founders, Eduardo Vivas.
His previous startup, Social Hour, was bought in 2012 for $51.5 million by mobile game network PlayPhone.
Vivas is only 28 years old and never finished high school.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider