Harvard's best degree: Dropping out?

After a successful IPO, FitBit's (FIT) founder and CEO James Park is now worth more than $700 million dollars.

But starting and taking a company public is not the only thing Park has in common with other tech entrepreneurs. So is being a Harvard dropout.

Others in the "class" include Mark Zuckerberg, who famously dropped out of Harvard after starting Facebook (FB) in his dorm room. His battle with the school was even part of the Oscar-winning film "The Social Network"

Bill Gates is another Harvard dropout. He started Microsoft (MSFT) soon after and is now the world's richest man. According to Forbes, Gates has a net worth of almost $80 billion dollars.

Some of yesteryear's most important tech leaders also quit Harvard. Polaroid founder Edwin Land left the university after his freshman year.

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William Randolph Hearst didnt' drop out -- he was expelled from the school for bad behavior -- but that didn't stop him from building one of the largest newspaper empire the world had ever seen.

So is dropping out from Harvard the best degree the school can offer?

"Most people who drop out don’t become the CEO of a famous technology company,” said Max Wolff, chief economist at Manhattan Venture Partners and part-time professor at The New School. “They have a different life path and not all of it is quite so glamorous. The ones we tend to talk most about are the one who are most successful. That being said, being iconoclastic, being willing to break the rules, [and] being willing to march to your own beat is what makes a great CEO a visionary as well as a university dropout not infrequently."

However, Harvard is trying to foster the entrepreneurial spirit. Students who decide to focus full-time on their business can come back with relatively little difficulty as long as it's within 5 years. That return policy is more generous than other Ivies such as Yale or Columbia.

So maybe the next young tech billionaire will actually graduate after all.

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