In Chattanooga, fewer than 25 percent of adults have finished a four-year college degree. But it doesn't always take a diploma to get a good start on the road to success.
Still, some people insist: Go to college, do what you want. Don't go to college, don't expect to be in control of your own destiny.
In 2014, about 21 million Americans were enrolled in college. But that same year, only about 2 million four-year degrees were handed out.
But that doesn't mean the drop-outs - or never-wents - will fail.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the richest men in America, is proof of that. So is billionaire businessman Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard to start Facebook.
Stephen Spielberg fell one general education requirement short of graduating with a bachelor's degree before he made "E.T.," "Jaws," "Schindler's List" and "Jurassic Park." He returned to California State University, Long Beach in 2001 to finish the degree. Super Bowl-winning quarterback Troy Aikman finished his degree 20 years after leaving college to play professional football.
Richard Branson, perennial member of the Forbes top 400 richest persons list with personal wealth of $5.1 billion and founder of the Virgin empire, dropped out of college and never finished.
Even several past leaders of the free world had a blank spot on the Oval Office (or equivalent) wall where a bachelor's degree might have hung. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson (from Tennessee), Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson (also from Tennessee) and Grover Cleveland never attended college.
Harry S. Truman, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison and William McKinley attended college but left before completing a degree.
And at least one potential future president - Wisconsin Governor and 2016 Republican candidate Scott Walker - doesn't have a college diploma.
Carl Bernstein - one of the Washington Post reporters who took down President Richard Nixon - left school before getting his four-year degree.
Chattanooga isn't exempt from the tales of personal success despite quitting or not going to college.
Some of the best-known names in the area have made it big without a degree: Check Into Cash founder Allan Jones; Covenant Transport founder and Chairman David Parker; former Chattanooga mayor Jon Kinsey; former Hamilton County mayor Claude Ramsey; former longtime U.S. Representative Zach Wamp; and media and real estate mogul Henry Luken.
At a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga business school event earlier this year, Parker talked about his experience starting and running a company without a formal college education. After finishing high school at age 16, he was accepted at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. But at the same time, he went to work at his parents' trucking company, Southwest Motor Freight. He took on 80 to 90 hours a week at work and soon had no space for school in his life. He dropped out and began a journey that led to huge success.
Decades later, Parker told a room of grads and soon-to-be grads how he envied them.
"Knowledge is a wonderful thing," he said. "I'm jealous of you all who have been able to attain [a degree]. I didn't."
He says Covenant now only hires people with a college degree because it shows a commitment to do and complete something.
"I couldn't get a job at our company today," he said.
Like Parker, Henry Luken was a self-starter who found better opportunities in the working world than inside the walls of a university. In the mid-1970s, he possessed software and programming skills valuable to companies, especially those offering long-distance phone service. He started classes at Ohio State University, but left when the school's registrar put him in the wrong courses. He started school again at a small college in Kentucky, but soon after suffered a car wreck and had to leave school.
"And I never went back to school, and don't miss it," he says.
Instead, Luken worked to learn more about programming and software on his own and soon found that what mattered to companies was his ability to show up for a job and get it done - and not charge them until it worked.
"There's a real school in actually doing things," Luken says. "I could generally show up and make things happen, which was its own proof all by itself."
Luken proved himself to larger companies and was hired full-time and for contract work by many of them over the years. Finally, he parlayed his experience and success into a company of his own. Now, he controls scores of real estate properties, commercial media properties and golf courses in the Chattanooga area.
And he believes a college education is valuable - but it's only as good as the person wielding it.
"There's some people that it's going to make a material difference in their life. There's some people that it's not," he says. "Beyond that, it's not going to help somebody who's not driven to succeed in the first place."
Meanwhile, Cleveland businessman Allan Jones virtually founded the payday loan industry despite quitting Middle Tennessee State University to help run his father's company. As one of the two wealthiest men in his hometown of Cleveland, Tenn., Jones now presides over a multimillion-dollar business empire, including management, suit manufacturing and private jet charter operations.
And Greg Vital, co-founder of Ooltewah-based Independent Healthcare Properties, LLC, built a chain or senior housing and assisted living facilities across the Southeast using his experiences with the Greater Chattanooga-Area Chamber of Commerce and Life Care Centers of America. Vital left college just shy of completing his bachelor's degree and made headlines when in 2014 - 36 years after leaving school - he went back, took the necessary courses and finished his degree.
Jon Kinsey, former mayor of Chattanooga and principal at a local development firm, says he's "neither proud of nor embarrassed by the fact that I didn't finish college."
To put food on his new family's table, Kinsey dropped out of school. He later worked for some of the brightest minds in the city, and "you can't find professors like that in any college," he says.
Zach Wamp, U.S. Representative from 1995 to 2011, left the University of North Carolina short of a degree after his "fraternity boy" life came between him and academics. Wamp achieved great success in Congress but says on his short list of regrets in life, not finishing his degree is tops.
"It's one of the very few things in my life that I started but didn't finish," he says.
But Wamp says a diploma isn't an end-all for success - it's just a great headstart.
"There are other ways to prepare yourself other than a four-year degree, but it's a huge headstart," he says. "Therefore I had to pedal really fast to catch up."
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David Parker
* President, CEO and chairman of Covenant Transportation Group, the company he founded in 1985
* 57 years old
* Married
* Forswore college to help run his father's trucking company, Southwest Motor Freight. Alongside his brother Max Fuller, Parker eventually sold Southwest Motor Freight and accepted a six-month, no-compete package with payout before starting his own company, Covenant, in 1985. Covenant is now a $750 million enterprise with more than 2,700 trucks and 6,700 trailers.
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Allan Jones
* Founder and CEO of Check Into Cash and Jones Management Services; Chairman of Hardwick Clothes
* 62 years old
* Married
* Studied business at Middle Tennessee State University in the '70s before leaving school to help run his father's credit bureau business after the elder Jones fell ill. Later seizing on the payday loan gap, Jones founded Check Into Cash in 1993 and quickly grew it into a national chain making hundred of millions of dollars in the process. In 2005, Jones' personal wealth was estimated at around $500 million.
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Greg Vital
* Co-founder, president and CEO of Independent Healthcare Properties, LLC
* 59 years old
* Married
* Studied business management at Southern Adventist University before leaving a semester short of graduation to work. Enjoyed successful stints at the Greater Chattanooga-Area Chamber of Commerce and Life Care Centers of America, before co-founding Independent Healthcare Properties, the company behind 24 (and counting) assisted living facilities in the Morning Pointe and Lantern at Morning Pointe facilities. Vital completed his degree in 2014, 36 years after leaving college.
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Henry Luken
* Owner, founder of Luken Holdings and Luken Communications
* 56 years old
* Married
* Started college twice before deciding after frustrations and a car wreck to go into the working world. Luken knew software and programming at a time when many didn't, and he worked for a handful of large companies before seeing an opportunity to go it on his own as a contractor. Luken later used his experience to launch his own companies and now owns scores of physical and commercial properties.
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Zach Wamp
* President, Zach Wamp Consulting and former U.S. Representative
* 57 years old
* Married
* Wamp graduated from The McCallie School as student body president and went on to study at the University of North Carolina. But a few years into college, Wamp fell into a habit of steady partying, and wound up leaving school. He says on his short list of regrets in life, not finishing a four-year degree is at the top. At the same time, though, leaving school was a wake-up call, he says, and he is now 31 years sober, retired as a prominent former member of Congress and has a family and a consulting firm.
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Jon Kinsey
* Partner at Kinsey Probasco Hays and former Chattanooga mayor
* 60 years old
* Married
* Studied math and economics at Boston University and Schiller University in Germany and political science and accounting at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. At 20, Kinsey decided to marry. Soon, his first son was born, and Kinsey was torn between finishing school and putting food on the table. He dropped school, but thanks to a series of opportunities, was still able to start his own company by age 28. Kinsey went on to be elected mayor of Chattanooga and served in that role from 1997 to 2001. Kinsey's development firm runs the famous Chattanooga Choo Choo and several other prominent properties.