Hell, most stupid folks watch NFL according to many on here. I take any judgement outside of meeting someone in person with a grain of salt. 99% on here are probably good folks. Even if we don't agree. Who agrees with their friends all of the time. World would be boring. College degree or not, there are lot of smart folks. I will say living where you do makes a big difference what you end up being. Parents and family though makes the biggest difference usually.

I don’t think a degree says you are smart IQ wise. I think a degree says that you are willing to put up with 4+ years worth of crap to better your chances of being “successful” in life. The piece of paper opens doors that are often otherwise closed and gives you a chance to prove yourself.

I also agree you don’t have to have one to be successful, but it does set you apart. And I only see it being more valuable as time goes on. Think about the entitled generation coming out of high school these days... maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t see near as many of them sticking with it to get that piece of paper. I think those that do will be rewarded for it even more in the future simply because there won’t be as many.

Add to that the price of college has gone through the roof. I just paid my last student loan payment after 20 years, and couldn’t be happier to finally be done with it. I do question what they are teaching at some of these left leaning universities these days. But, I’m pushing hard for both of my children to go, and I’ll do whatever I can financially to help them get it. (Assuming they don’t party too hard and piss my money away... then the rug will get ripped from under them, just like it was me, and they will have loads of student loan debt to repay like their old man has). LOL, it’s funny how grades improve when you have to pay for them yourself.

I think stupidity and lack of common sense go hand in hand. Education cannot teach a person common sense but I am not sure about the other.

All I know is that if my family and I do just about the exact opposite of what most folks are doing, we're gonna be just fine.

So a guy that has to do almost nothing; lives on a few acres, is happy as a lark, could care less what anybody thinks, is an idiot. We may be the idiots, always wanting more and more.

I have heard the “you showed you could put up with 4 years of it” before. To me all they showed is they liked to party and were not ready to go to work. I have a customer who is 20 and opened his heavy equipment rental business last year. He found an investor, got his business off the ground and he is doing really well and is up to 10 employees already. All his friends are partying away, he’s making money.

Who is really smarter, the person who went to school somewhere and listened to weird professors for 4 years and racked up thousands in debt, or the person who knew they were smart enough to not have to spend all that money/time for a piece of paper and ended up really successfull anyway.

Drive and common sense are two things that most successful people have plenty of.

Years ago I worked on a persons airplane doing mostly sheet metal work. Reskinning control surfaces etc. He asked me if I had gone to college. I told him no and why did he ask. He said it was a shame because even though I may be smarter in ways than someone who had gone they would always make more money. Later on in life I got my A&P license and then got my Turbo Jet Flight Engineer License I worked as a mechanic and Flight Engineer on a privately owned Boeing 727 until I retired. I proved him wrong.

You speak a lot of truth. I agree 100% about the drive an common sense. I also agree a lot of those going to college end up partying too much and are not real serious... I won’t lie, I was that way in the beginning when things were “free”. My dad ripped the free ride away from me after just one semester at A&M and I was on my own.

I have seen a handful of well off people who never stepped foot in a college just like your example of the 20 year old running his business. Also seen several who rack up a ton of debt and either don’t finish up, or choose basket weaving as a degree and don’t make squat. But if you look at almost every director, VP, or C Suite, I can almost guarantee you they have a college degree. Pick the nicest neighborhood you want anywhere in the US and I’m willing to bet most that live in them will have it. It’s a numbers thing. It’s sure not for everyone, but it can open doors that otherwise are shut.

Greg said it well. I didn’t start this chat to say that a fellow needed a degree to be considered smart. In actual fact, there is a woman now related to me by marriage that has a PhD, and she (by any measure) would not be considered by you to be smart. Just talking to her, I can feel IQ being drained from my brain. I consider her to be stupid.

As for a college degree and whether or not a fellow needs one, it’s usually more about what degree you have than if you have one if you are looking for a job right out of college. But...I have had people working for me in corporate America that were first class workers and extremely talented and worthy of promotion, but I was never allowed to promote anyone that did not have a college degree. Any degree would have been enough.

Maybe the fact that I spent 40ish years in working environments where stupidity was never encountered has given me some sort of incorrect impression that most people are smart. In the real world, in reality, I suppose we have the Bell Curve of intelligence.

While in the oil trading business, being very successful led me to think I was pretty darn smart (and maybe I was), but every now and then I would find myself in the company of truly brilliant people, people where the brilliance shined through. When you encounter that, it can be a stunning surprise, and it left me humbled, and I kept my mouth shut. I think the list of those people totals 5. Three were billionaires then and the other two probably are by now. They all had degrees and advanced degrees.

I wonder if the "investor" has a degree? Something to consider....

The last statement is absolutely correct. A degree won't necessarily make you successful, but it increases your odds. Of course there are exceptions both ways.

One of my favorite sayings..."Success has a way of following the same people around." Your customer that is doing well would likely be doing just as well if he had gotten a degree. Some people, whether they wanted to be a real estate agent, roofer, engineer, homebuilder, or insurance salesman, would be successful at whatever they decided to do.

Also, I view success as more than making money. A lot of people can make money but are bad people and have a dysfunctional family. I'm much more impressed by the man who is happily married to the same woman for 50 years, raised respectful, disciplined, motivated children, and made a good living than I am by the guy who has 8 figures in the bank but is a poor husband and father.

Could be very true....for most of us the goal is to be like "that guy". Plenty of people are happy without much...that doesn't make them an idiot. A lot of satisfaction can be had by being content. Everyone is wired differently.

I think as we get older our idea of what makes a man “successful” changes. Mine sure has. And it probably will change even more in the next 20 years. Sometimes it’s not the man with the most that’s the richest, sometimes it’s the man who needs the least. There’s a lot to be said about being happy.

After reading through this thread, I'm beginning to think a widely-held, unstated, definition of stupid might be "anyone who isn't a lot like me."

80/20 +-10%

I do a lot of really dumb stuff.