Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Graduating from a college ‘not needed,’ ‘they’re not for learning’

In a response to a question from the audience during the Satellite 2020 conference, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk,  said that graduating from college is “not needed” and that colleges and universities are “not for learning.”

“You don’t need college to learn stuff, OK?,” Musk answered the question during a one-hour Opening Day Keynote.”Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free. It is not a question of learning.

In answering the question, Musk, who dropped out of a doctorate program at Stanford University in 1995, also cited several successful individuals who did not finish college. “Gates is a pretty smart guy. He dropped out,” said Musk, referring to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. “Jobs was pretty smart. He dropped out, Larry Ellison – smart guy. He dropped out, like, obviously not needed. So did Shakespeare even go to college? Probably not,” he said.

“There is a value that colleges have, which is like, seeing whether somebody is — can somebody work hard at something, including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments, and kind of soldier through and get it done?

“That’s like the main value of college and then also you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people your own age for a while, instead of going right into the workforce. So I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning.”

The billionaire, who gradated from the University of Pennsylvania, said he wants to ensure that Tesla recruiting information and job postings do not indicate that a college degree is required “because that’s absurd.

“But there is a requirement of evidence of exceptional ability. If you try to do something exceptional, it must have evidence of exceptional ability. I don’t consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability. In fact, ideally, you dropped out and did something,” he said.

You can watch the video below.