I would not say it was littered with such people.
A few people are so clever or talented that school is not up to the job of advancing their knowledge. Such people do things like founding Apple Computers or Microsoft, etc.
Most people who failed at my school were simply lazy and/or thick as pig s*it (the two seemed strongly correlated).
I've read articles where someone suggests that if you want to be the richest businessman then the best thing you could do might be to drop out, and then compares ex drop-outs with graduands.
Which is totally misleading, because it only notes the drop-outs who made it big. It doesn't include the far bigger number of drop-outs who end up with less than the people who stayed the course.
So kids who might be reading this - stick at it!
It might be okay to drop out if you have big stash of seedcorn venture capital and a killer idea. It isn't such a good idea if you only have a stash of weed and killer acne.