Are college dropouts more successful than people with good education? It would seem so if you consider that many billionaires are people who dumped college. However, what this hides is the fact that although millions quit studies before completing them, very few of them go on to become rich.

What the list of the super-rich dropouts signifies is that in business, a top degree is not as important as having the right aptitude, attitude, determination and vision.

Here are some dropouts who went on to become billionaires:

William Henry Gates III (1955-), along with Paul Allen, co-founded Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software maker. Bill Gates, the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $48 billion (Rs 211,200 crore!), is probably the best-known college dropout.

Gates attended an exclusive prep school in Seattle, went on to study at Harvard University, then dropped out to pursue software development. As students in the mid-70s, he and Paul Allen wrote the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful PC.

In 1975, Micro-Soft - later Microsoft Corporation - was born. Three decades on, Gates has been Number One on the Forbes 400 for over a dozen years. And here's something you probably didn't know: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently provides 90 per cent of the world budget for the attempted eradication of polio.

Text: Preetee Brahmbhatt

Design: Uday Kuckian

Photographs: AFP/Getty

DON'T MISS: Billionaire College Dropouts! - Part II