11 wildly successful people who never went to college

Mike Coppola / Getty Images

• Do you need to attend college to be successful?
• The FBI recently charged dozens of people for paying a college-admissions consultant to help their kids get into elite universities.
• But the 11 people below — including Michele Ferrero and Li Ka-Shing — never pursued higher education.

The FBI has charged dozens of people — including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin — in a college-admissions scheme. Thirty-three parents are accused of paying a college-admissions consultant to help their kids get into elite universities.

The idea that these parents may have committed a crime to help their kids succeed got us thinking: Is a college education even necessary to achieve success?

Ask the 11 people below — which include billionaires and real-estate moguls — and they might say no. As it turns out, none of them ever enrolled in a college course.

Check out the list and see if your perspective on the value of higher education changes.

Leonardo Del Vecchio

Luxottica

At age 25, Leonardo Del Vecchio founded eyewear maker Luxottica, which recently merged with French ophthalmic optics company Essilor.

The multibillionaire octogenarian paid his way through design school by apprenticing at a car and eyewear-parts factory in his teens, according to Forbes.

Savitri Jindal

Mint/Getty Images

Jindal is the chairperson of the Jindal Group and the widow of Om Prakash Jindal, the conglomerate company’s founder. The businesses in its portfolio include JSW Steel, JSW Energy, JSW Infrastructure, and Jindal Steel & Power.

Michele Ferrero

YouTube

Before the Italian chocolate manufacturer passed away in 2015, he was listed on Forbes’ billionaires list as the 30th richest person in the world, Business Insider’s Tanza Loudenback reported.

Ferrero left his fortune to his family; his son, Giovanni, is now CEO of the Ferrero Group.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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SEE ALSO: Hollywood actresses and business leaders are accused of paying to get their kids into elite colleges by cheating on exams and faking athletic skills. Here’s how investigators say the scheme worked.

Source: Business Insider – slebowitz@businessinsider.com (Shana Lebowitz)