As artificial intelligence fuels a new startup boom, debate for students over whether to spend years—and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars—earning a degree or dropping out to chase the next billion-dollar unicorn has intensified. But Patrick Collison, the billionaire cofounder and CEO of Stripe who dropped out of MIT (not once, but twice), recently told Gen Z they shouldn’t feel pressured to rush that decision.
“When I was dropping out, people thought it was super weird,” Collison said last week at Y Combinator’s Startup School. “I think, overall, if you enjoy college, I think there’s no harm in finishing. I felt this real sense of urgency, which I think, in hindsight, was a bit unnecessary.”
