5 University Dropouts Who Did (More Than) OK

Common wisdom dictates that a degree is the key to success – and, in most cases, it’s probably right. Still, there are those who’ve bucked the trend, and looked pretty good doing it.

Jon Snow

A young Jon Snow attended the UK’s University of Liverpool to study law. He had just done a stint as a volunteer in Africa and was understandably passionate about racial equality and human rights.

After learning that the university was involved with companies that traded in apartheid South Africa, the soon-to-be-famous journalist joined his contemporaries in protest. Hundreds of students staged a sit-in which lasted six weeks. Ten students were expelled from the university for their actions – Snow included.

Snow later wrote: “Whilst in some ways eviction served me well in that I didn’t become a fifth-rate lawyer, in other ways it left me questioning whether I would ever have got the degree. And, of course, I have lived and worked in an environment in which everyone else in the workplace has a degree.”

It all turned out well in the end, with Liverpool offering Snow an honorary degree in 2011. These days, he’s one of the UK’s favorite news anchors, having presented Channel 4 News for over 25 years. His principles remain firm; he declined an OBE, believing that journalists should not accept honors from those on whom they report.

Buckminster Fuller 

Author, architect, inventor and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller held 28 patents, authored 28 books and received 47 honorary degrees throughout his life. But his first time round at Harvard was a crashing disaster, resulting in his being thrown out twice.

Having entered the university in 1913, Fuller was first expelled for partying too much with a vaudeville troupe. Though he returned the next year, he was dismissed once more for his apparent lack of interest and refusal to conform. This is a man who subsequently received the Medal of Freedom, was the subject of two documentary films and had an allotrope of carbon named after him.

Hey, if it worked for Mr. Fuller…

Samuel L. Jackson

In the 60s, you probably weren’t even born. But Samuel L. Jackson, famous for his portrayals of violent gangsters and a certain purple-sabered Jedi, was already proving his badass credentials at the historically black Morehouse College.

In 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson acted as an usher at his funeral before flying to Memphis to participate in an equal rights protest march. A year later, as a protest against the school’s curriculum, Jackson locked the institute’s board members in a building for two days. Charged with unlawful confinement, he was suspended for two years.

Although Jackson did eventually return to Morehouse to complete his degree, it was in drama rather than his original choice of marine biology. The local aquarium’s loss was Hollywood’s gain.

Salvador Dalí

A controversial figure and undeniable genius, Dali was never one to fit in. As he wrote in his autobiography: "At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

His ego did too. The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which includes Picasso and Oscar de la Renta among its alumni, suspended him in the early 20s for inciting student unrest. In his subsequent final year, he declared that the artists appointed to determine his degree mark weren’t good enough to judge his work. They were good enough to expel him, though.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Shelley was a man of strong views and couldn’t resist expressing those convictions at university. In his first year at Oxford, Shelley co-wrote a pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism and pointedly sent it round the college dons.

So far, so good. But this was 1811 and atheism was a taboo subject at best. It didn’t take long for the head honchos at University College to work out who wrote the thing. Shelley was dismissed for, so the College Register claimed, “contumaciously refusing to answer questions proposed to [him], and for also repeatedly declining to disavow a publication entitled The Necessity of Atheism”.

All very well – but for the fact that Shelley, in the years following, was to become one of the greatest poets of the 19^th century. Today, University College seems to have repented of its actions; its Shelley Memorial occupies a large section of one of the college’s front corridors.

So next time your tutors bring you to bear for a missed deadline, ask yourself: what would Dalí do? If you have any sense, you’ll do the exact opposite.

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