Four dropouts among the world’s richest:

The lurking of an educational issue

Padma Edirisinghe

If you are a ‘dropout’ do not despair. You can still end up among the top ten of the world’s richest. That is according to the details of a list the writer came across recently. A few words about these sensational lists that just boggle us, the lesser folk.

They flash across the media from time to time sometimes marked by variations. I mean the lists usually differ. The writer once came across one such list predominated by ‘ Chinamen’ and ‘Chinawomen’.

And one from Japan whereas this most recent list excludes those from the Cathay Empire and the Land of Cherry Blossoms. Another list once included J.K.Rawlings, the famous Women writer of England much to the boosting of the ego of female scribes but this list has dropped her and included one who has inherited the property of another, may be husband or parent. Those are what may be called windfalls.

Just analyzing the most recent list, nine out of the ten are males while the only female just comes on to her fortunes via endeavours of others. So what ever hullabaloo is made of gender equality the male predominance in many an area including the accumulation of dough is obvious.. As to the age range they spread from 53 to 80. That shows that it is very difficult to reach the top ten in this sphere, this side of 50. It needs so much of time investment.

And countrywise and continentwise, USA and South America predominate. After all they happen or happened to be the world’s El Dorados where men set out recklessly to make their fortunes. Not a single from the Continents of Africa and Australia. two from Europe (France & Spain) and two from Asia and strangely that too from India. So two from a country where one notices the highest quota of the impoverished. These are out on the streets subject to all the vagaries of weather while the billionaires are cocooned in their luxury and hardly visible.

And now to the educational aspect of the Issue or the Analysis that could throw light on what goes to make a genius for these men and women, other than those who inherit them can be termed “business geniuses” or ‘financial geniuses.’

Four of the world’s richest are dropouts. First comes Bill Gates, king of the Microsoft world, dropout from Harvard University. Followed by Larry Ellison, dropout of not one but two Universities, those of Chicago and Illinois then there is Eike B atista, dropout of RWTH University (Brazil) and Mukessh Ambani, Indian dropout of Stanford University. Two of the ten seem not to have got any substantial education at all as the column against education remains empty or Nikam.

Anyway one mitigating factor about the dropouts is that they are not school dropouts but University dropouts that indicate that they had the intelligence and perseverance to go in for higher education but other interests predominated inducing them to make their billions not through academic excellence but through business acumen. Has ever anyone made billions via academic exercise is an interesting point to ponder. Want to know the amount of dollars they have made over the years or come to through windfalls) and through what they made it. Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico has made 74 billion $ by age 71, source - Telecom, Bill Gates OF US, 56 billion $ by 55, source -Microsoft, Warren Buffett of US, source -Berkshire Hathaway, by 80 Bernard Arnault, 62 of France, source LVMH, Larry Ellison, 66, US, source - Oracle, Lakshmi Mittal (male) 60 of India, source-steel, Amanda Ortega, 74 of Spain-source: Zara, Eike Batista, 54 of Brazil, source-mining & oil, Mukesh Ambani, 53 of India, source-petrochemicals, oil & gas and Cristie Walton (only female), 56, source -walmart, inherited.

Marital status: Seven are married, two - widowed, and one divorced.

A silly analysis, you may say, that gets you nowhere. Yet it gets you somewhere that may even have a dampening effect on formal education which way you look at it. One could say that regimented education is not regimented to produce geniuses, that these geniuses are just products of chance, of luck, of sheer perseverance. One could even argue that brilliant students are often disenchanted with school education, that it only imprisons and shackles their independent minds. Great men like Einstein never paid any compliments to their school education usually implying that it only blunted them.

Of course countries like the USA experiment with Star schools meant for education for Gifted children. But no record exists of any genius coming out of these Star schools and blazing trails of glory as Bill Gates has done. In fact the only who had located his talent at school level has been the librarian, None of the teachers had bothered or singled him out.

Should one go the whole hog and begin special schools or introduce streams to locate and foster talents of children who show signs of future spectacular success or just let the world go by as it is — playing blind man”s buff and leaving everything to chance? Remember that our very successful business tycoons such as Maliban Mudalali and Nawaloka Mudalali sprang out of the vagaries of a sheer unplanned world. A half way house would be better especially in developing countries as ours where human resources should not let go waste.