The point was to show that a large percentage of people in positions of power do have a college degree. This doesn't mean the college degree is what made them successful. Just sharing facts. This is quantifiable. What is not quantifiable is their resiliency and mindset. The reason they are successful is not the ability to get the degree itself, it's their unwavering belief in their own skills, and they just happen to have a degree with it.
If what you said was true "succeeding in college means you're likely to succeed in life", then the majority of college graduates would be successful. Right?
NBA players didn't make it to the NBA because they were tall, they made it because their dedication to their craft, and being tall helped. Just like people who graduate college don't become successful because of their degree, they become successful because of their drive to succeed, and having a degree can help open doors sometimes.
Correlated: a large percentage of successful people and having college degrees.
Does not mean everyone who has a college degree is successful, not even a large percentage.
Not correlated: succeeding in college and having success in real life.
But it's all good. I understand what you were getting at.
You are more or less right at what you are saying but it's AMAZING how much the social sciences (Sociology, Psychology...) with the use of advanced statistics and quantititave research have actually put numbers in what we are all seeing and have been guessing all our live.
In short:
You take a teenager and you want to make a judgegemet base on number as to how they will fair in life. The 2 most important factors are:
1) Inteligence (as measured by EQ not by degrees, a lot of stupid people manage to ge a college degree) ~ 20-25% correlation (So it also doesn't matter if you go to a fancy college/Uni or not)
2) Consciensousnes ~ 10% correlation
To me, this is quite liberating, because it means that Inteligent and hard working people have a good CHANCE of suceeding in life BUT at the same time there are other factors (2/3) that are very random and of course some are tottaly environmental.
Luck (being born in a rich family), Beauty (models), Country of residence (hugely important), creativity (artists), education, social skills, physical strength, any kind of extrordinary one-dimensional skill (athletes), cunningness...
What you must understand is that we are talking about AVERAGES, yes there are succesful people that are tottaly dumb (I will present an example of a friend of mine) but these are exceptions, what I presented were averages.
My example: I have a friend who is a millionaire but hasn't even finished school because he's dumb and is also quite lazy. How does he manage? He's amazing at training horses, he has such an extrordinary rare and one-dimensional skill that makes him a sought-after professional.
