You've probably heard that one can grow rich without higher education. The most quoted examples are that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who became very successful despite dropping out of university.
They aren't the only ones. Steve Jobs, founder of the Apple brand of computers and mobile phones, also dropped out of university. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey left her studies and got into a very successful television career (she completed her coursework later).
Going by that logic, we should be seeing more Kenyan billionaires because most of the adult population was not fortunate enough to go to university. Instead, poverty levels remain high. This proves that there is more to success than having or not having academic qualifications.
An individual's family background contributes a lot to their success. Bill Gates was not born into a poor family. His father, William Henry Gates, was a lawyer. The mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, served as a board director in several companies. The family was well known in corporate circles, including the companies that later became Bill Gates' biggest clients.
"My parents were well off; my dad did well as a lawyer, took us on great trips, we had a really nice house, and I've had so much luck in terms of all these opportunities," Gates said in the 2019 documentary, 'Inside Bill's Brain'. Bill Gates could afford to drop out of college because he had a financially stable family backing him up.
How about Mark Zuckerberg? Edward Zuckerberg, his father, was a dentist, while his mother Karen was a psychiatrist. Like Gates, Mark could afford to concentrate on his Internet startup because he wasn't going to starve if things did not work out.
"Millionaire university dropouts are the exception; most university dropouts have worse life outcomes than graduates," Dr Tayo Odeyeji, a financial adviser, warns. "Get that degree, folks. It's important," he says. Odeyeji believes the goal of education is not money; growing rich is a by-product of an educated mind.
Statistics confirm that higher education qualifications, such as a university degree, raise one's lifetime income. According to the World Bank, tertiary education graduates in Africa earn about 21 per cent more than peers who did not pursue higher education.
Odeyeji criticises the Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates university dropout stories as misleading. As teenagers, Gates and Zuckerberg were already doing advanced computer programming before they were admitted into a prestigious university. "Those guys dropped out of Harvard, not the college next door. They are exceptions. Most college dropouts die in penury," Odeyeji warns.
Similar stories can be said for billionaires in Kenya. The vast majority of the rich did not start out from scratch; their families were already running successful businesses. A few billionaires were born into poverty but succeeded through a combination of purposeful networking, entrepreneurship skills and leadership ability. Quite importantly, having powerful contacts was good for their businesses.
Before you drop out of the education system with hopes of becoming the next billionaire, think hard about your circumstances. Do you have a unique skill? Do you have a financier?