Apple is the biggest ever tech industry in terms of market value. It has a wide range of successful entrepreneurs who come from humble backgrounds. While many studied hard day and night for years to get a top college seat and to come through with flying colours, there are others who also did the same without even graduating college. Yes, for some people, a college degree is not that important but expanding possibilities is more important and that’s what Tim Cook believes.
During the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting held on Wednesday, in the White House with President Trump and other officials, the Apple CEO has his say against jobs relying wholely on educational qualifications. He also insisted that there are certain skills like programming and non-programming in demand in the tech industry that students may not even learn during college days.
“And so to that end, as we’ve looked at the – sort of, the mismatch between the skills that are coming out of colleges and what the skills are that we believe we need in the future, and many other businesses do, we’ve identified coding as a very key one,” Cook said during the meeting.
Tim Cook went on to reveal surprising fact that half of Apple’s recruitment last year were from among people without a four-year college degree. He believes that skills are exactly what the education system needs.
As per Cook, each child in the US should know some basics of training in coding before they graduate high school. This is why Apple launched its ‘Everyone Can Code’ program back in the year 2016, a school curriculum established to help, guide and nurture students in the best possible way to learn to code in steps, right from kindergarten to college. At present, at least 4,000 schools in the US use the curriculum.
Also, other top firms like Google, IBM, and more are also ready to hire employees like this way. Apple itself was founded by a college dropout, Steve Jobs and he is not the only “uneducated” success either.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates too dropped out of Harvard and so was Mark Zuckerberg decades later. Other success people include Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Dell founder Michael Dell were also college dropouts when they started.
Last but not least, Cook says, you could also study for half your lifetime if you want, but “expanding your horizons” is what matters the most.