Do Successful People Need A Formal Education?

        As young kids, it is drilled into our heads that we need to do well in school and get into a good college, and by getting a degree we will be able to get a good job.  All kids are put through the long process of a formal education from the early age of about five whether they like it or not.  Most kids start from pre-K or kindergarten and gradually advance through each grade – aside from the very smart kids who skip a grade or two – until twelfth grade when all high school students are expected to apply for colleges and continue their studies in specified fields of their choice.
As an eleventh grader, I am always being told that I need to get good grades so that I will be accepted into a decent college and get a reliable job.  From a young age, children in school are constantly told and expected to go to college and receive nearly two decades of formal education so that they can receive a college degree. And most people actually do need a degree, but there are a select few who don’t.  In some instances, people who became extremely successful were college dropouts and even high school dropouts. People don’t necessarily need to have a formal education to be successful.  If a person possesses the right qualities and has all the right resources, he or she may be capable of being successful despite not having a proper education.
In today’s society, finding jobs works in favor of those with higher college degrees who are most likely to get higher paying jobs.  Some people may believe that having a formal education helps people attain higher social status, and therefore you need it, but this is not true.  A person can have a master’s degree and still not get a high income job if they are not motivated and don’t strive.   And meanwhile, there are people who are high school or college dropouts that are very successful and have high paying jobs because they strive and have passion.
There are a few famous, successful people that achieved great things without a college diploma.  For example, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, was a college dropout, but he’s not alone.  Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was another successful man who dropped out of college.  Moreover, Albert Einstein, who is credited with having one of the most brilliant minds the world, was a high school dropout.  These three influential men all had certain personality traits that accompanied their natural talents in their respective fields of work.
It is extremely rare for people to become successful without a formal education, but those who did succeed had much more than just natural talent.  They had motivation, passion, strong will, and most of all they had to be hardworking individuals.  It took an immense amount of hard work for those few successful people to get to get to where they were or are.  A famous quote by Einstein revealed that, “Genius is one percent talent and ninety-nine percent hard work.”  With such personality traits, talent, and good connections or resources, a person has a chance to become successful without a formal education.  Especially when the career field of choice does not require academic knowledge or achievements, such as being an actor or actress, singer, or musician who will most likely hardly remember the things they learned in algebra or biology class.
Have people in the past been successful without receiving a formal college diploma? Yes. Not all successful people must have a formal education.  There are not many cases where people have been capable of it and it may not be recommended, but it is definitely possible.  Your perspective on this topic really depends on your personal definition of “successful”.