What is the shame in dropping out of college? None, thank you very much. Particularly when you are completely convinced you have a great idea and that college classes are really taking up your time in a wasted way.

This is what Bill Gates did back in 1975 when he walked away from Harvard University. It did not hurt Gates much and Harvard at last does not have hard feelings.

On June 7, 2007 Harvard will give Gates an honorary college degree and he will thank them by delivering the commencement address at the graduation ceremonies.

Gates has committed the bulk of that wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his leading philanthropic organization. Gates will speak in Tercentenary Theatre and will also receive an honorary degree.

Gates met Steven A. Ballmer ’77, now Microsoft’s chief executive, in their freshman year, and the two lived on the same floor in Currier House. “Steve and I would pay very little attention to our classes and then furiously inhale the key books just before an exam,” Gates recalled in a 1995 autobiography.

A member of the Fox Club, Gates has said he was as a loner at Harvard who rarely slept, “sitting around in my room being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.” The circumstances of his departure from Harvard have long been a point of contention. Gates was disciplined by the Ad Board for conducting commercial business on the University’s computers, but he maintains that he left voluntarily in 1975 because, “I wasn’t sure the window of opportunity for starting up a software company would open again.”