I was briefly Director of Community Life for the TAG Project. I was homeschooling my 2xE sons and moderating a gifted homeschooling list, basically.

Since he was a preschooler, I have told my oldest son he will need to be an entrepreneur. He won't make it as an employee. I tried to enroll him in college classes when he was 13. The college accepted him, but the classes fell through. I think one was full and the other was cancelled.

After that, he told me he really did not want to attend college. He wanted me to keep homeschooling him, even though what he knew in some areas was beyond me, so I wasn't really qualified to teach him per se in some areas. So I became a resource person that fostered his own self education.

Bill Gates is a college drop out. So is Madonna. I used to be able to quote statistics. A fairly high percentage of entrepreneurs can't be arsed to finish a degree program. They are too busy making things happen.

Degrees are about credentialing. Entrepreneurs often take classes for a specific purpose, to learn specific knowledge or skills. Credentials tend to matter less to them than knowledge and skill.

The minute I post this, you can bet someone will rebut it. It isn't true of, say, 90% of entrepreneurs and there are plenty who do have substantial formal education. But the aggregate figures show (or did at one time) that these things are generally true.

It's certainly not just you. Plenty of entrepreneurs describe themselves as mavericks or misfits or similar.

i once heard that most small business owners are either the children of small business owners or small family farmers.

if this is true, perhaps we're in a downward spiral, given historically smaller startup cohorts and the agglomeration of family farms into corporate farms.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and insight. I hope your oldest is able to find his way and pursues his passion.

I'm not sure that I have a learning disability that could be diagnosed, and I did (barely) finish an undergrad degree, but I feel exactly the same way.

Higher education is (mostly) a market response to social stigma / conventions. Degrees are as much about asserting social class as they are about career prep or the passing on of knowledge.

Anecdotally, I have a number of friends with graduate degrees, some full PhDs. I make more money than any of them and am arguably more successful (by their standards).

Everything I learned in life was self guided. I too am a software engineer (doing some relatively hardcore stuff) and have started more than one successful company.

I can't fix the system, but I will tell my son that higher education is optional and help him get a start on his own (and not just wrt money) if he decides to skip it.

And to more directly address your post, I do consider myself educated and an expert in a couple things. I encountered exactly zero teacher along the way that made a meaningful contribution to that.

That's awesome to hear. I'm thankful for your insight and feel encouraged to know that I'm not the only one. I'm starting to realize that it would be good for me to grow my local network with individuals such as yourself. Having people to talk who can better understand and appreciate my uniqueness is important for general mental health.

I see your point and am in a similar situation, but I have to suspect that truly educated people who haven't achieved a higher degree are a relatively low number for the purposes of aggregate statistics.

That's generally exactly what they're trying to measure: statistics about people who follow the standard path society lays out for education. If something about getting an advanced degree is discouraging people from doing startups, that's important to know, whether or not some population of smart autodidacts also exists.

That's exactly what they are measuring though, people are considered "educated" in those statics for receiving those higher level degrees. Not a bad thing you don't fall in that bucket, but that's just the facts of what they are surveying for.