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.
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