Executives at some of the biggest tech companies are urging young people to rethink the value of a traditional college education. Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently said he doesn’t care whether employees went to school at all, arguing that performance and ambition matter more than credentials. Apple CEO Tim Cook has echoed this view, noting that roughly half of Apple’s U.S. workforce once lacked four-year degrees and emphasizing collaboration and technical skills over diplomas. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, meanwhile, reflected that if he could return to college, he would choose physics or chemistry over electrical engineering, suggesting that adaptability matters more than a fixed academic path.
The industry’s history supports this outlook: legendary dropouts like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates built trillion-dollar companies without completing college. Still, even Gates has admitted he regretted leaving Harvard early, calling higher education valuable except in “exceptional” circumstances. With AI reshaping the job market and young graduates struggling to find opportunities, the debate over college’s role in tech careers has become more relevant than ever.
