A degree is definitely not a must.
One of my former uni lecturers said this to us before he left to
join an MNC.
"In order to be successful in life, it is more important to know
the right people than to know the right things"
Look at the world today, there are so many successful people who
are non degree holders, and on the flip side, there are so many
degree holders that are not successful.
Obviously when the world has over 6 billion people, its
easy to pick out any sum of people who fit into any criteria and
slap on the word 'many'. eg there are many people with
AIDS.
Even 1 million can be called 'many' and how many by % is it out of
the world population?
The pertinent word is not 'many', but 'most', because probabilities
and odds are what walks the walk in logic.
I can assure you that most successful people have degrees. Please
don't confuse this with most people with degrees are
successful.
Second, you assume that conditions are static. This is of course,
untrue. Times have changed.
You can find more (more just means higher in number/frequency than
another set of proposition, doesn't mean many or most) successful
people in their 50s to 80s who do not have formal education.
People like Wee Cho Yaw and those who have since died, the early
immigrants of Singapore from China like Tan Tock Seng, Tan Kah Kee.
But please lah come on use your brains. When they were of school
going age, the population then who had access to university
education was like 0.5%. Nowadays things have changed. Any tom,
dick or harry have access to undergrad and postgrad
education.
This makes the distinction between education in elite institutions,
education in mediocre institutions eg NUS and no education all the
more stark.
If you don't understand all I have said above, it is the reason why
you didn't manage to get educated.
