But getting a decent education here in the UK, where you dont get beaten up by teachers, in my experience is quite difficult. I even dropped out of one schools six form to enroll in another six form, perhaps demonstrating my willingness to learn, but even one of those courses was sabotaged.
To be honest I think the mentality of the british empire was and might still be pervasive with state school education, viewed more as an institution to contain people of a certain age than a place of learning.
Perhaps that is why law is not taught to everyone at school even in a TL;DR fashion?
The founder of Facebook too
The founder of Google grew up in Academic family.
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All of them received financial support, reducing risks loosing living expenses. Risk of loosing livelyhood, significanly changes how a founder or an enegineer spends their time.
Connecting young people to networks of rich, influencial and generally experienced & smart people -- is a huge deal as well.
It improves their verbal skills, perception management, broadness their knowlege.
All of the above, can probably be easily found in many Stanford, Harvard, MIT graduates...
None of the are 'competitively obtained skills' due to 'hard work'.
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Additionally moral choices that favor lying, fudging facts and intentions -- may also be a characterstics of graduates from those types of schools... This an opinion.
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All of the above contributes to successfull financial outcomes.
None are particularly representative of person's merits compared to others...
The founder of Microsoft was a Harvard math major that probably could have gotten into an r1 phd program if the stuck it out for what 1 more year?
The founder of Facebook was a Harvard cs major that could graduate if the stuck it out.
Dropping out early to start your business is very different than someone who never went to school or flunked out of their freshman year.