Don't Knock Dropouts

An article in today's Wall Street Journal about the young man who left a string of package bombs in Austin, Texas and was finally apprehended described him as "a 23-year-old who had dropped out of college." A few paragraphs later he was again cited as "the 23-year-old college dropout," as if the term conveys so much information it was worth repeating.

We can safely assume that the authors of the article, Russell Gold and Dan Frosch (these days it takes two college graduates to write a short news story) both completed their four years after high school, maybe more, yet they can't come up with any other way to describe this wayward youth than as a "college dropout," thus implying he was a lowlife dummy. I'd like to alert them to the following list of millionaires and billionaires who are also college dropouts, with the hope they will stop thinking it's a useful descriptive term. (Maybe they should go to graduate school to expand their vocabularies.)

Abraham Lincoln (Not a millionaire, just former US president)
Mark Zuckerberg (Founder and CEO, Facebook)
Bill Gates (Founder and CEO, Microsoft, wealthiest person on the planet)
Steve Jobs (Founder and CEO, Apple)
Frank Lloyd Wright (Architect)
Lady Gaga (Singer)
John Mackey (Founder and CEO, Whole Foods)
Travis Kalanick (CEO, Uber)
Michael Dell (Founder and CEO, Dell Computers)
Tom Hanks (Actor)
Patrick Dempsey (Actor)
James Cameron (Movie Director)
Buckminster Fuller (Inventor, Futurist, Philosopher)
Evan Williams (CEO, Twitter) 
Jim Carrey (Actor)
Walt Disney (Founder, Disney Company)
Tiger Woods (Golf Pro)
John Lennon (Singer)
Wolfgang Puck (Celebrity chef)
Harrison Ford (Actor)
Larry Ellison (CEO, Oracle)
Ellen de Generes (Entertainer)
Ted Turner (Founder, CNN)
Coco Chanel (Fashion mogul, Founder of Chanel)
David Karp (CEO, Tumbler)
Daniel Ek (CEO, Spotify)
Brad Pitt (Actor)
Matt Mellenweg (CEO WordPress)
Oprah Winfrey (Entertainer, Publisher)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author)
Ralph Lauren (Fashion mogul, Founder of POLO)
John Mayer (Singer)
Al Pacino (Actor, also dropped out of high school)