Back in the reign of the dotcoms, Colvin Pitts, 22, left his computer science classes and backpack behind at Stanford University for a job as a programmer at Media3k, a San Francisco streaming media Web site that set him up with a US$45,000 salary and stock options worth US$70,000.
Around the same time, Daniel Billotte, 26, dropped out of Arizona State University in his senior year to work full time at AtWeb.com, a Web site developer in Sunnyvale, California, for US$63,000-plus and options valued in the six figures. And Joe Cavanaugh, 22, left Stanford in the middle of his junior year to devote himself full time to his own company, EmpowerD.com, a Web site intended to help disabled people.
"I knew when I could no longer give enough time to school and the company," Cavanaugh said. "Since Stanford would always be there and I could go back, I decided to take a shot and see how far we could take the company."
The three were among the thousands of college students who were lured away from their math textbooks and History 101 classes by dotcom startups that promised riches and fame. But when Internet Armageddon came and unemployment loomed, they and many of their peers rediscovered the value of an old-fashioned ticket to career success: a bachelor's degree. And back to school they went.
"These young dotcommers began to feel unfulfilled," said Allison B. Hemming, the president of Hired Guns, a consulting firm in New York that specializes in the new economy. "They developed these amazing Web sites and then watched them disappear, and they come back to school looking for something more concrete."
Their return to academia was not easy. "It's tough to walk away from something you put so much work into," said Ravi Paidipaty, 20, who began his senior year at Yale on Tuesday. Paidipaty left school last summer to start broadcastbuilders.com, which delivered broadcasts to MP3 players and cell phones but lasted only a few months. He seems almost relieved to be back. "In the bigger picture, I think it's nice to be a kid and a student for a little while longer and graduate on time with your friends," he said.
The herd instinct played a large part in the defection of so many students to cyberbusinesses. Before the bubble burst, everybody seemed to be getting in on the action, and they did not want to be left behind.
"You're sitting in class, and meanwhile, you're hearing about people your age making millions and millions of dollars," said Zaw Thet, 21, who dropped out of Stanford in his junior year to start GetInventory.com, a Web-based supply-chain-management company. "You want to make money," too, he said.
At one point last year, Thet said, eight dotcoms were up and running in a single fraternity house at Stanford. By the end of the year, though, he had run out of money and shut his down. "It almost pains me to talk about it," he said. "We had a great team, but you can only work in the garage for so long."
He returned to school last December to pursue a double major in political science and computer science and plans to graduate next June. Meanwhile, he has a job -- with a Fortune 500 company. "Going back to school after being in the work force feels a little odd but it feels right," Thet said.
For some, the pilgrimage back to school was always part of the game plan. Peter Douglas, 22, a native of Potomac, Maryland, who graduated from Stanford in June, says he could not resist dropping out for a chance to help muscle a company from the ground up.
"I always knew I'd come back and finish up," Douglas said. "I just didn't know it would be that soon."
His adventure began in February 2000, when as a junior he took a part-time writing stint at Bluedog.com, a developer of Internet shopping tools near the Stanford campus. Before long, he was putting in 40 hours a week and growing resentful about having to go to class. So he dropped out in the spring.
"I got sucked in," Douglas said. "I became entirely obsessed with the success of the company and its product and totally immersed in the startup world." With a US$40,000 salary and a trove of stock options, he also took his girlfriend to fine restaurants, gave lavish wine parties and booked a two-week vacation to England.
Then, in August, Bluedog.com went under, and Douglas was suddenly just another unemployed dotcommer. "There was a great deal of grieving," he said. "It was really comforting to come back to school and throw myself into something more stable like write papers, study for tests, earn my degree. No one can take those things from me." After graduation, he chose one of the oldest professions around: acting.
Stanford's dean of students, Marc Wais, says the exodus of Net-giddy students reached such proportions two years ago that the school had a problem filling campus leadership positions.
But then they came back. Cavanaugh, who left Stanford in the spring of 2000 to start EmpowerD.com, returned to school last September after EmpowerD.com died. After graduating in June, he joined a software company, and he plans to apply to business school soon.
"I'm glad I went back to school," he said. "It was a loose end I had to tie."
Billotte, who dropped out of Arizona State in the fall of 1998 to join AtWeb.com, is now making plans to return to school either this spring or next fall to complete his senior year. In the meantime, he is working full time as a software engineer at AOL Netscape in Santa Cruz, California.
As for Pitts, the computer science major who went to work for Media3k last year, he will be returning to school this month as a senior with few regrets. "As for my US$70,000 in stock options, I could net about US$200 if I sold today," he said.
As the academic year opens, the flow of students back to campuses pretty much matches the outflow two years ago. "These students need support and stability now," said Anna Copeland Wheatley, the editor in chief of AlleyCat News, a New York trade publication that specializes in dot-coms.
The Stanford Daily, the campus newspaper, even ran a story last quarter welcoming back the dotcom refugees.
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