In a world where TikTok success stories and startup millionaires dominate Gen Z’s social feeds, more young people are choosing to skip college and dive headfirst into entrepreneurship. But Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is urging them to think twice before taking that leap.
Speaking at Italian Tech Week 2025, Bezos cautioned that while stories of college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg inspire many, they represent the exception, not the rule.
“It is possible to be 18, 19, 20 years old, drop out of college and be a great entrepreneur,” Bezos said. “We have famous examples of that working… But these people are the exception.”
Bezos, who graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science, emphasized that his own path through traditional education and corporate experience laid the groundwork for Amazon’s success. Before launching the e-commerce giant, Bezos honed his skills on Wall Street, learning the fundamentals of hiring, management, and business strategy.
He advised young people to embrace those formative early career years.
“Join a best practices company, somewhere you can learn the fundamentals how to hire, how to interview,” he said. “There’s still lots of time to start a company after you have absorbed it, and it increases your odds.”
Bezos added that launching Amazon at 30, rather than at 20, gave him a critical edge. “That extra 10 years of experience actually improved the odds that Amazon would succeed,” he said. “I finished college, and I think it’s been helpful to me.”
Despite a growing narrative that college is overrated, data tells a different story. According to Goodwill Industries CEO Steve Preston, non-graduate Gen Zers currently face the highest unemployment rates in the U.S.
Goodwill’s 650 job centers assisted over two million people last year, and Preston said the vast majority struggling to find work lacked college degrees.
“Of the overall unemployment, people without college degrees have no jobs,” he noted, warning that the problem is even more severe among Gen Z men.
Preston, a former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, also cautioned that artificial intelligence will exacerbate the issue by replacing many entry-level roles that young workers typically rely on.
“It’s much harder to find a job,” he said. “It’s really hitting young adults without college degrees.”
And despite corporate claims of embracing “skills-based hiring,” Preston revealed that hiring managers still lean toward traditional degree holders. A new LinkedIn Workforce Confidence survey supports this, showing that nearly half of director-level professionals continue to view a college degree as an essential requirement.
In an era where artificial intelligence tools can instantly provide advanced knowledge, some experts argue that formal education is more relevant than ever.
“A student might prompt an AI to build a simple app,” said Dana Stephenson, CEO of Riipen, an experiential learning platform. “But without training in software architecture, debugging, and responsible data use, they risk creating something fragile or even harmful.”
Similarly, Anant Agarwal, Chief Academic Officer at 2U, believes that degrees “future-proof your career by preparing you for the next big technology, whatever it might be.”
While more than half of Gen Z graduates claim their degrees weren’t worth the money, certain fields continue to yield high returns. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reveals that aerospace engineering majors, for example, enjoy median mid-career earnings of $125,000 annually. Advanced degrees, particularly in medicine, can unlock salaries exceeding $200,000.
Jeff Bezos’ message is clear: while a few extraordinary individuals may find success outside the classroom, the majority are better off gaining education and real-world experience first.
In the age of AI disruption, adaptability, knowledge, and foundational skills remain the true engines of long-term success, something no viral entrepreneur story can replace.
