There’s a major fallacy in this sort of analysis. You concentrate on the famous cases of dropouts who went on to become uber-rich, while ignoring the much larger sample of people who dropped out and proceeded to have a life full of financial and other struggles. That’s because few stories are written about individuals in that latter group.

To get a real sense of the impact of dropping out, you’d need to look at all those who dropped out and see what fraction of them proceeded to have great success, and then compare that fraction to the same fraction out of those who completed their degrees.

Honestly, I haven’t done that analysis, so I can’t give you a definitive answer. However, if I had to speculate, I’d guess you’ll find that dropping out of school is associated with a decrease in probability of success rather than an increase.

The main things you get out of getting a degree is that (assuming you pay attention and don’t just party your way through school) you gain life lessons in developing grit (which is a great predictor of success), and learn skills such as critical thinking, effective communication, and how to learn new subjects.

That’s on top of the actual information you acquire, which admittedly may or may not stick with you and may or may not continue to be accurate and useful.