Mario Puzo, the fabled Italian-American in his 1969 masterpiece, The Godfather, once said: “Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .” Yes, most times, the real value of greatness lies not in the inheritance of stupendous wealth and expansive estates, it is in the capacity of men to break the rules and smash the bars of limitation. Real greatness is when erstwhile servants against odds straddle horses; when peasants through practice and perseverance chisel their way to the palace; when ordinary folk assume extraordinary wisdom and strength to achieve the exceptional; when the despised through hard work becomes the desired.

You can grow to greatness; you can become the marquee, indeed, the real McCoy of your calling or vocation if you work at it. Humanity is replete with men and women who reached for their inner strength, ignored the negative vibes from watchers and bystanders to achieve genuine greatness. They became inventors, protagonists of global brands and measuring sticks in their turfs. Yet, these same people were yesterday reviled as nobodies, as nincompoops and as fitting motifs of incompetence.

There is a lesson to be learnt from history. There is no useless child. There is a tincture of heroism in every being. Lionel Messi was born with a health defect yet he has surmounted it to become the greatest and best footballer in his time, triumphing over heavily muscled men in a sport where brawn is often considered an advantage. We see such conquest against odds in many places, in diverse disciplines.

True, greatness does not consist in multiple university degrees or longevity on this side of life. The world is replete with stories about men and women who dropped out of school at various levels; some did not even attend any school including elementary scholarship, yet they became pathfinders and defined their own space in entrepreneurship, creativity, philosophy and science. Such outliers are to be seen in entertainment, marketing, cosmetology, fashion, aviation, ICT, media etcetera where they have etched their names in bold prints.

Again, another lesson. You do not need a degree, albeit a university degree, to climb the ladder of success. Bill Gates and his co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, did not bother to complete their university education. They both dropped out as sophomores (200 level students), Allen from Washington State University and Gates from Harvard. Yet, they founded the biggest software company in the world and gave both mind and soul to the computer.

She barely managed to pass her GCSE, even with a D-grade, but Kate Ross rose to stardom becoming one of the greatest models that ever catwalked the earth. Bring on the Nigerian contingent of school dropouts who breasted the tape in the nation’s race for entrepreneurial excellence. Orji Uzor Kalu; rusticated from college for participating in student protest, he forayed into business and later politics and made a success of both; Cosmas Maduka, who dropped out at elementary three to become an apprentice trader. Today, the apprentice has become the master and a very strong brand in the nation’s automobile sector. What about Cletus Ibeto who ventured into business after primary education. He now plays big in cement, petrochemical, hospitality and automobile spare parts manufacturing, a feat many PhD holders would never dare.

Aliko Dangote is the richest man in Africa today because he had a forerunner in Alhaji Alhassan Dantata. He is the great grandfather of Dangote who at the time of his demise in 1955 was the richest man in West Africa, a feat he achieved without high school.

Does anybody remember Henry Ford, the man who built Ford Motors? He is the automobile billionaire who never saw the four walls of a school. What about super writer and author of several books, including the evergreen Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens? He left school at age 12 and never had any other formal education but he became a journalist and great bard of classical books. And how we love the fragrance of the Coco Chanel perfume and adore her timeless genre of clothing. But Chanel, born Gabriele Bonheur in France, never went to formal school at any level.

And would you believe that Mack Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook was a Harvard dropout? Or that Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors (of course he gave you the electric bulb) was once considered unfit for education by his teacher and had only three months of education in all his life? What about the demised Steve Jobs who gave the world an Apple and an ‘i’. The man behind the iRevolution – iMac, iPad, iPod and other ‘Is’ only spent a semester at Reed College in Oregon, United States before dropping out.

He dropped out of college twice, was ridiculed as a blockhead, was told by his adoptive father that he would amount to nothing yet Larry Ellison braced himself and founded Oracle, one of the biggest software and enterprise solution blue chips in the world. And Walt Disney? The man regarded as the greatest cartoon animator was a high school dropout at 16 but today he holds the key to the fancy and fantasies of children, and even adults, all over the world.

True, a good degree may give you a good job. But always remember that the best of jobs will never land you on the island of greatness. You need to discover your talent, hone it (everyone has at least one talent) and apply it. Real greatness comes from pushing beyond limits and boundaries. You can grow great… And always remember this, there is no worthless person, not even your son you think will amount to nothing or your housemaid you so greatly despise.

A university degree is worthless as long as the bearer of such degree is not skilled up for the demands of his environment. It remains just what it is: a paper certification, not a skills endorsement. This is the context in which some Nigerians advocate that the nation needs more vocational and skills acquisition centres in the same way it is encouraging the mushrooming of universities that do nothing except award degrees that do not certify knowledge and character.

This is the 21^st Century. There is no better time than now to tweak the nations’ university curriculum. The university or any higher institution is where the total ‘man’ is built up physically, mentally and spiritually. It is where the entrepreneurial man is built, the innovative mind formed and where the seed of leadership is planted. These days, none of these seems to entice the students because they have been made to believe that all that matters is the paper called a degree.

So, the one who could have excelled as a footballer in the university would abandon the drill and grill of honing his soccer skill to pursue a paper called a degree; the one who could have acquired all the skills of modern day entrepreneurship would concentrate only in passing exams in excellent grades without the concomitant knowledge. At the end what you get is a brood of certified and certificated illiterates masquerading as university graduates. But we must not all be university graduates flaunting papers we call degrees. The likes of Ray Kroc (McDonald’s), Cosmas Maduka, Orji Uzor Kalu, Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA), Mary Kay Ash (Mary Kay Cosmetics), Andrew Carnegie (Carnegie Steel Company) and lots more have proved that success in life is worth more than designed papers called degree certificates.

Truth told, you do not need a degree to make a success of life. You need to discover yourself. Unfortunately, Nigerian education curriculum does not allow for self-discovery otherwise why can’t a student in Nigerian university easily change his or her course of study? Elsewhere, if you enrol to study psychology and the school discovers you are good in marketing, you will be encouraged to switch to marketing. In Nigeria, once you enrol for math, be sure to end up with math. This does not promote innovativeness and it’s clearly not in sync with trends in other climes.

First published in Sunday Sun newspaper