Mark Zuckerberg is unleashing his business sagacity as he modulates for a new era in America as the Trump 2.0 Presidency arrives. The Board of Meta and the governance system in Facebook, Threads, Instagram, etc, are evolving with fact-checking gone. Look deeper, you will ask: was he not the college dropout? Nothing like that, Mark did NOT drop out; he dropped in, and received America’s peerless personalized university education!
Nigerian and African students: do not drop out of school citing Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Bill and Mark did not drop out, they merely dropped in. In a way, they replaced mass-training professors at Harvard University with private Harvard-quality professors called venture capitalists (VCs) and executive coaches. Magically, they have “special professors” who actually pay them! Which one is better: a Harvard professor that asks you to pay school fees or the VC that writes you $millions and still coaches you because he wants to ensure his $millions are safe?
It is not everything you read from American media that you should consume without thinking; if you attended the secondary schools Bill and Mark attended, you will not need a university in your life! I am a TED Fellow, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, etc. The kind of immersive experiences in such ecosystems is a testament that using “dropout” does not do justice to what happens to these technical “dropouts”. In TED, I met a guy who did not finish secondary school but MIT admitted him. Yes, MIT admitted someone without a secondary school certificate!
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In the first semester, he took a leave from school because some investors gave him $millions to commercialize something exciting. To get him up to speed, they surrounded him with experts and coaches. Simply, he was getting more than MIT professors even though he “dropped” out, and in the process they turned him into a paper millionaire! That is not the typical outcome of dropouts.
Do not fall into the illusion: stay in school and work hard. Startups and opportunities to create new ones will always be here. The best businesses have not been started. You will have time to do just that, post-graduation. That university education is an internship for something big – make the best out of it. #StayInSchool.
But if you must drop out, ensure those asking you to do so will provide you the personalized education Zuckerberg and Gates attended post-dropping. But I am not sure anyone has created such anywhere in Africa.
Think of a system where a Harvard professor, ex-CEO of MTN or ex-CFO of Apple or ex-Senator or such domain masters teach you one-on-one for 18 months. There is a market for that. Get it from me: it is the best educational system money can buy but it is super-privileged. Those of us with no access are actually the dropouts while Gates and Zuckerberg are the real dropins!
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The first tragedy that will befall the son of a poor man is when he starts demanding from his poor dad those lofty things the wealthy dad gifts to his son. Real African parents don’t beg their kids to have sense, sometimes they will even tell you the opposites of what you ought to do, it’s left for you to use your ‘number 6’.
Many families across Africa are yet to produce their first university graduates. Some of the young people engaging in conversations about dropping out of school are even in line to be first generation graduates in their lineage, but somehow they are drawing parallels with people whose family history has produced graduates up to 10th generation.
Please don’t stay in school, just drop out. You will know how far.