
The Dropout Fallacy - ForHackernews
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/how_failure_breeds_success/2014/05/peter_thiel_drop_out_grant_encouraging_students_to_stop_out_of_college.html
======
stox
The whole point of an "education" is to learn how to learn. Some master that
without coursework. More power to them. These days, a college degree has
become more a certificate in training of specific domains of knowledge. If you
can do it yourself, you probably will get a broader and potentially deeper
understanding of the subject than you would in a structured course. Getting an
employer to recognize that is another story. Since there are not concrete
metrics to measure such accomplishment, degrees act as a proxy for potential
worth to an organization. This is a unfortunate situation, and wastes a great
deal of potential.

~~~
typicalrunt
This. Education should teach you to become an autodidact [1]. Otherwise, you
are really only being trained for a narrow set of skills, and those skills may
not last when new technology is invented.

I was always curious and hungry for knowledge as a kid, but what I lacked was
the knowledge of where I can find more knowledge (the libraries in my
childhood were crap; the most complex computer book was how to use Office). It
wasn't until university that I realized how to research things and find the
best resources to learn that I truly was able to teach myself. That happened
at the end of my 3rd year of university, and my 4th year was spent barely
attending class and instead teaching myself the required material on my own
time, while I was also learning about things not taught in class.

edit: Argh, clicked submit too soon. added second paragraph.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism)

~~~
vinceguidry
I don't think autodidactism can be taught. You either have it or you don't. I
like to think I have it, I taught myself software development and now have a
career in it despite dropping of college after a year. I'm constantly reading
books and improving the quality of my thought. College was interminably boring
to me, I did not consider anything I did there to be learning. That's why I
dropped out.

I don't know very many people who can do this. Most people I know, once
they're out of school, learning stops. It's not that they can't learn anymore,
it's that the impetus to do so ceases once they're outside an environment
designed to facilitate it. I, and I suspect most autodidacts, have to leave
said environment before I can really get engaged.

~~~
christiansmith
You might be looking at it from the wrong angle. What if we're all
intrinsically autodidacts and 12-16+ years of compulsory education
successfully trains that quality out of most people?

It's probably not a coincidence that those willing to go against the grain
with respect to education seem to be disproportionately represented among the
successful entrepreneurial class.

This entire discussion reminds me of the "mappers" vs "packers" theory. It's a
bit long winded but a good read:

[http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-th...](http://the-
programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-thinking-about-thinking/)

~~~
vinceguidry
> What if we're all intrinsically autodidacts and 12-16+ years of compulsory
> education successfully trains that quality out of most people?

It's possible that is the case. I don't think it's by any means proven. But
all of the autodidacts I've ever read about, and known, myself included,
managed to be able to completely ignore the effects of compulsory education
and forge ahead despite active discouragement from society.

Simply removing the compulsory aspects of education is, as far as I can tell,
not going to be able to create this sort of resiliency, even if it improves
the ability to learn. Perhaps they won't need it, I don't know.

------
ChuckMcM
It is sad when people latch on to a narrative and then try to visualize
themselves as part of it without asking the really difficult questions.

College is a great tool. You get to mix with other really smart people in a
much higher density than you were exposed to in high school. If you visited a
number of colleges you may have been recruited by a college that seeks your
particular flavor of intelligence and in that you might find many more people
like "you" there.

Mostly though college is a great place where you can do something (get a
degree) without really anyone except your own desire to finish forcing you
through it, and in the presence of numerous temptations to _not_ finish it.
Its like the final walk over coals at a volunteer self awareness session.

 _" Can you do what you set out to do, in the face of other people trying to
tell you it isn't important or dangling other more tempting activities in
front of you?"_

A college degree is a reasonably objective and authenticated 'yes you can' to
that question. And anyone who can answer that question in the affirmative will
be better off than someone who cannot.

It isn't college that makes you employable, its knowing you can finish what
you start does. If you already are doing that for large things you will be
successful with our without a degree.

~~~
jamielee
I think that college is great. But also, I think it can also be somewhat
dangerous to one's ability to think for oneself. There is always one and only
correct answer, and there is an authority figure who knows what it is.
University culture promotes reading and learning without taking action and
making real impact. It also encourages that you seek to be told what is right
and what is wrong, instead of endeavoring to figure it out for yourself.

But I guess being a good employee requires a lot of those qualities that I
mentioned above. You have to be a good follower.

No one is telling you college isn't important. The majority of the population
actually thinks the opposite.

I don't think education is (or should be) about finishing and getting that
degree. It should not even be about employability. Why does success equate to
employability?

College is valuable, but I think society would be better off if we did not
focus so much on jobs, status, success, failure, etc. Why not focus on how to
create value or make the world a better place? These are things that a college
education alone cannot teach you how to do.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I have to disagree with much of this comment

    
    
       > I think that college is great. But also, I think it
       > can also be somewhat dangerous to one's ability to think for oneself.
       > There is always one and only correct answer, and there is an authority
       > figure who knows what it is.
    

I find this assertion to be very surprising. In my experience college, unlike
high school, the entire point was to get students thinking for themselves,
rather than accepting that there was a single correct answer. In my freshman
year, and in the freahman year of each of my three daughters, there was always
a required class which included a "colloquium" or "discussion" component.
These classes were designed to break students of the habit of treating what
was said, or read, as 'the answer' and to instead think critically about the
facts being tossed about.

    
    
       > University culture promotes reading and learning without 
       > taking action and making real impact. It also encourages 
       > that you seek to be told what is right and what is wrong, 
       > instead of endeavoring to figure it out for yourself.
    

Again, my experience differs. Were I or my kids to discover that the
University they were attending felt that way I would immediately withdraw into
a more traditional institution of higher learning, which starts with the
premise "everything we know may be false, here are the tools we use to
understand truth in the world around us."

    
    
       > But I guess being a good employee requires a lot of those qualities 
       > that I mentioned above. You have to be a good follower.
    

Again, I would disagree. As an employer I value employees who think over those
to simply follow orders. One of the things I try to ascertain in interviewing
folks is whether or they do think. Can they reason to their opinion on a topic
or do they hold it simply because someone else shared it with them? My
experience in high school was that many people held opinions because they were
"cool" or "expected" rather than holding them because they believed in them.
It was one of the most depressing parts of that period of my life and I was so
relieved when I got to college that people weren't like that really.

    
    
       > College is valuable, but I think society would be better off if we did not 
       > focus so much on jobs, status, success, failure, etc. Why not focus on how 
       > to create value or make the world a better place? These are things that a 
       > college education alone cannot teach you how to do.
    

One of the interesting statistics is we passed 30% of the US having a college
degree in early 2012 [1]. So if 70% of the people in a group don't have
college degrees, it is difficult to reason about whether or not 'society'
would be better off or not. You could ask the 30% of degree holders how they
evaluate creating value in society, you could ask the 70% the same question,
and then you could ask which of those two groups has a better idea of what
kinds of things make the world a better place.

But a different approach might give better answer. Ask those two groups this
question, "How would you go about figuring out if what you were doing was
helping the world be a better place?"

College prepares people to answer questions of that form, ones that require
the student to not only come up with an answer, but to construct a process for
arriving at the answer that gives them confidence in the result. No pre-made
formula, no quick peek at Wikipedia, but basic reasoning from first
principles.

I know several people who have that skill and did not go to college, but
pretty much everyone who graduated from college had that skill tested many
times and had to pass that test in order to graduate.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/education/census-finds-
bac...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/education/census-finds-bachelors-
degrees-at-record-level.html?_r=0)

~~~
jamielee
>I find this assertion to be very surprising. In my experience college, unlike
high school, the entire point was to get >students thinking for themselves,
rather than accepting that there was a single correct answer. In my freshman
year, and >in the freahman year of each of my three daughters, there was
always a required class which included a "colloquium" or >"discussion"
component. These classes were designed to break students of the habit of
treating what was said, or read, as >'the answer' and to instead think
critically about the facts being tossed about.

What is considered "thinking critically." How do you pass this class? Well,
the nature of classes is that someone decides if you pass or not.

>Again, my experience differs. Were I or my kids to discover that the
University they were attending felt that way I >would immediately withdraw
into a more traditional institution of higher learning, which starts with the
premise >"everything we know may be false, here are the tools we use to
understand truth in the world around us."

This isn't actually a fact. Just your reaction. But it does not disprove
anything. It is what you say you would do. And also, you seem to be exerting
authority over your kids... I am being a bit pedantic, but you say if your
kids discovered [...]then you would withdraw [...]

>Again, I would disagree. As an employer I value employees who think over
those to simply follow orders. One of the >things I try to ascertain in
interviewing folks is whether or they do think. Can they reason to their
opinion on a >topic or do they hold it simply because someone else shared it
with them? My experience in high school was that many >people held opinions
because they were "cool" or "expected" rather than holding them because they
believed in them. >It was one of the most depressing parts of that period of
my life and I was so relieved when I got to college that >people weren't like
that really.

You seem personally offended, if I am not mistaken. I meant that managers in
giant corporations generally (not always) expect obedience from their
subordinates. I know because I work at a big company. I have read stories and
I see it being satirized all the time. Satire is funny because there is truth
in it (even if it is just a hint of it).

>One of the interesting statistics is we passed 30% of the US having a college
degree in early 2012 [1]. So if 70% of >the people in a group don't have
college degrees, it is difficult to reason about whether or not 'society'
would be >better off or not. You could ask the 30% of degree holders how they
evaluate creating value in society, you could ask >the 70% the same question,
and then you could ask which of those two groups has a better idea of what
kinds of things >make the world a better place. >But a different approach
might give better answer. Ask those two groups this question, "How would you
go about >figuring out if what you were doing was helping the world be a
better place?" >College prepares people to answer questions of that form, ones
that require the student to not only come up with an >answer, but to construct
a process for arriving at the answer that gives them confidence in the result.
No pre-made >formula, no quick peek at Wikipedia, but basic reasoning from
first principles. >I know several people who have that skill and did not go to
college, but pretty much everyone who graduated from >college had that skill
tested many times and had to pass that test in order to graduate.

If 30% of the population had college degrees, then maybe that just means that
30% of the population is just better than the other 70% at passing
standardized tests. Does it mean that they made more value in the world? To
say that you need college to answer the question "what would make the world a
better place" may have been true 30 years ago. But now you have the internet.
You can see what is happening around the world. You can venture out and look
for problems to solve.

Again, with the passing of tests. Someone decides.

I am not hating against all colleges. I think MIT is great, because they let
students build stuff. I chose to go to a above average college (it's not ivy
league, but it is more or less well-regarded. I am not trying to be stuck up.
I did not even want to go to college. I forced myself. I was lazy and did not
want to study SAT. But I definitely am a lot smarter than I was without, but I
can't say what I would have turned out to be if I had not gone. I liked
reading about business so I may have stumbled upon YCombinator earlier if I
weren't so busy studying textbooks).

There is a difference between giving a verbal answer about how to change the
world and actually implementing it. The latter is far, far more difficult.
College teaches you how to say the right answer, how to think about what could
be the right answer. To actually build the solution with your hands comes from
internal motivation.

------
mikeash
It's odd that the article just drops this figure and then moves on:

> In 2011, Forbes reported that 63 of the 400 richest people in the world
> never got further than high school.

That's a really interesting number! Of the richest of the rich, all but 16%
have a college degree. Among the general population of adults, 40% have a
college degree in the US, and under 7% worldwide. If the richest of the rich
followed the same proportion, we'd expect 240 of those 400 to have stopped at
high school for the US number, or 372 for the worldwide number.

Clearly there is an extremely strong link between extreme wealth and higher
education. We can argue causality and necessity, but it's weird to blow right
past such a number.

~~~
minikites
I thought this was a weird omission too, it means that 337/400 of the richest
people have gone further than high school and presented that way, it makes a
strong argument for higher education.

------
mikemarsh
As a college dropout myself, I don't think I've ever used this ridiculous
"argument" to justify my decision. Are there seriously people out there who
fancy themselves "The next Mark Zuckerberg", simply because they don't have a
degree?

~~~
VonGuard
I dropped out too, and while I was perhaps reassured by the fact that
successful people had been able to make it without college, really I just
fucking hated sitting in school all day.

There are plenty of reasons to drop out beyond "wanting to be Zuckerberg." How
about "not wanting $100,000 of debt?" or "Prefering to be paid for my work?"

College just isn't for some people. It's not a bad thing or a good thing. It's
just a thing.

~~~
fernandotakai
disclosure: i'm not american

i dropped out because i started college when i was 22. i was already working
as a developer for 4 years.

when i got to college, it was more of the same and i was basically learning a
lot of things that i already knew -- so for me, it was better to focus on
working than working + going to college.

it worked quite well in my case.

------
squozzer
Maybe a better question to ask is, "What is success?" We tend to focus on the
trappings / assets of success - title, salary, neighborhood, spouse - while
neglecting the liabilities - stress, debts, time demands.

And granted, we fetishize outliers such as Gates, but we also fetishize by an
order of magnitude greater the "American Dream Death March" that begins once
some authority figure identifies an aptitude which might become a prestigious
/ high-paying job in the future.

Slate, here's a clue - if the education racket weren't so predatory, the
Dropout Fallacy wouldn't have so many fans.

------
strlen
Conjecture: the point of Thiel Fellowships isn't to bribe everyone to stop
attending universities, it is to combat elitism and education-based
stratification of society.

Thiel specifically picked "safe bets" from elite universities (most of which
are extremely flexible when it comes to students returning to finish their
degrees after the fellowship) to demonstrate that elite university graduates'
success is not due to the fact that they've graduated from said universities,
but due to other factors (intelligence, grit, curiosity, etc..)

That in turn will make traditional employers think twice before turning
someone away because at 17 years of age an admission officer (who, of course,
knows nothing about the employer's industry or the position the candidate is
applying for) looked at myriads of factors on their application (most of them
irrelevant to the employer's industry) and decided -- with a very different
acceptable margin of error and optimizing for very different goals -- that
they should attend their state's flag-ship public university as opposed to
Stanford. Most startups and younger established technology firms already know
this: while they may only send recruiters to specific campuses, as well as
form partnership with only a handful programs (like the Waterloo co-op
program, for example), once one has been in the industry for a few years, all
else being equal, the university they've attended matters very little. The
_quality_ of education they've received matters -- but how they've received it
doesn't; this may be obvious to many of us, yet if you speak to someone in
another field or industry and a different picture emerges.

I see messaging as fairly clear in that Thiel isn't telling a 20 year old me
(a first generation immigrant working on BS degree in CS/Math without taking
any loans) or a 23 year old me (having an employer pay part of my tuition for
an MS degree in CSE, again, without any loans on my part) to drop out: I was
seeking a degree for the purpose of (wait for it...!) education and not
signalling, I chose a field of study I both love and that had great career
prospects, and I did not go into debt. On the other hand, he is telling
society that "attending an elite school for the purpose of signalling" should
not be considered an investment that can never lose its value.

~~~
ForHackernews
I don't think it succeeds in that goal at all. All it does is replace elite-
university signalling with fellowship-winning signalling.

(And since most of the Thiel kids are from elite universities anyways, it's
not even really removing that factor.)

YCombinator does the same thing, incidentally. It's more valuable as a stamp
of approval that somebody influential is impressed by you than it is for the
actual money or support.

------
bindley
I dropped out, not to avoid education, but to seek it out in different ways.
It's been a year since and I've found employment that is as good, or better,
than I would have coming out of a traditional university.

It wasn't about becoming the next Gates, it was about getting educated in a
way that made me a more valuable team member. I just felt like I could do it
better than the universities could.

------
prostoalex
Author chooses the examples of Gates and Zuckerberg, who are both Harvard
dropouts, substitutes Harvard with "any college", and then viciously attacks
this straw man.

Top tier schools and rest of the schools produce different dropouts. Someone
who was deemed fit to enter Harvard (or any of the top 20 school), was good
enough to survive the first few year(s) and then decided to pursue an idea of
their lifetime is actually taking _less_ risk than someone who got into a
local college and then decided to forego the actual degree.

Both Gates and Zuckerberg were actually on a "leave" from Harvard with option
to come back in case the things don't work out. Both of them had enough of a
financial cushion to focus on building the company without repo man taking
their car away and kicking them out of an apartment for defaulting on a rent
payment.

------
haomiao
This whole conversation is so stupid. Dropping out isn't the same thing for
everyone. You really can't talk about dropping out without looking at context
and consequences, namely why and how they dropped out and the options that are
available to them afterward.

I mean, say you're a kid from an upper middle-class family who's parents are
paying for your education at some top-tier college, and you drop out because
you have a startup that's growing and making money or got funded by some deep-
pocketed investors. Or you're a genius who's been recognized as such by one of
the world's most famous and well-connected venture capitalists and given a
grant to go off and do something entrepreneurial.

Then you REALLY CAN'T FAIL. Say your company goes belly-up. Who cares? The
school doesn't care, you just go back to class and your parents start paying
tuition again. You graduate with your degree, except now you have valuable
experience and connections that help you get internships and jobs and maybe
funding for your next startup.

You dropped out because you had a plan and a social and financial safety net
that meant you had meaningful choices about your future. Dropping out was
taking a shortcut, the life equivalent of jumping over the edge on Rainbow
Road in Mario Kart 64. If you make it, you're hugely ahead! And if you don't,
well you get picked up and put back on your original path and maybe you're a
little behind but really it's no big deal.

Now think about an alternative scenario. You're a low income kid who was the
first in your family to go to college. You're working 20 hours a week because
your student loans cover tuition but nothing else at the giant-ass state
school you go to. Your parents (you're one of the lucky ones whose family
stayed together) are cheering for you but they're also laid-off and
unemployment is running out and they're not sure how they're going to pay for
dad's pills and anyway they're not sure you're cut out to be in college and
they're worried you'll fail. So you drop out because you're struggling in some
of your classes, and the shift manager at work offered you more hours and you
say why the fuck not because the extra cash can't hurt.

What do you think your options are when that company cuts back and lets you go
in a year or two? Think you've saved enough after paying down the interest on
your loans that you can go back to school and not work? Think that 2 years of
credits and work experience at a dead end job is going to translate into a
high-paying position at some solid company?

The point is, if you have a specific plan in which dropping out will advance
your career and life interests and also have enough of a backup that you can
recover from failure, then you should totally take a break and go do something
exciting.

If you don't, if a college degree is your lifeline to a better life than your
parents' and you're skating on a razor's edge to be there in the first place,
then just Stay In School, kid.

And now the rest of you stop debating the value of finishing college as if it
meant the same thing to everyone and get off my lawn. Go back to work.

~~~
cabinpark
Zuckerberg, Gates, Gaga, and Dell all had upper class parents and attended
exclusive private high schools. Jobs was brilliantly smart but did come from a
lower class family. Oprah comes from a very poor background and did make it
successful. However she works in a completely different industry so I don't
think it's at all fair to compare her to the tech folks.

------
the_watcher
>> The sad reality is that for every person who drops out and achieves great
success, far more do not.

Also accurate: The sad reality is that for every person who finishes college
and achieves great success, far more do not.

There's also a major sampling bias here, in that "all dropouts" includes those
who dropped out because of laziness or similar reasons, rather than just those
who dropped out because they found the cost of a degree to be far greater than
it's value. Also, the cultural premium put on college degrees likely
encourages many who could easily be successful as a dropout to finish anyway.

There's a false argument here: the question isn't whether everyone should drop
out or go to college, but whether or not there are cases where going to
college is not the best decision (which is empirically true).

------
stackcollision
If college really isn't for you then so be it, it's your decision. But
dropping out because these famous people did it is really stupid. For every
one dropout who turns into Gates, there are thousands who go hungry every
night (anecdotal, yes, but I know at least two).

Dropping out != a path to success in its own right. The reason these famous
dropouts are successful is because they were either intelligent and worked
hard, or they got lucky (iirc, Zuckerberg only dropped out _after_ he had a
viable product, so that should hardly count).

It seems to me that the media is pitching dropping out of college as a magic
pill. If you're ready to put your head down and work your butt off then more
power to you, but getting out of school isn't even half of step one.

~~~
maratd
> there are thousands who go hungry every night.

Hyperbole much? I don't think a single person ever went hungry because they
didn't get a piece of paper that says they're super duper smart.

~~~
stackcollision
As I said in my post, it's anecdotal yes, but I know at least two people who
are in this situation.

Take one of them for example: She can't afford to eat every night. She can't
get a good job in this economy, and she's got debts from the portion of
college she did attend that are weighing her down. The loan providers aren't
going to forgive those debts just because she didn't finish.

But yes, I knew someone was going to call me out on hyperbole as soon as I
posted that. Perhaps a better way to say it is that the vast majority
certainly don't become humongously successful like we are being led to believe
they will.

~~~
jamielee
She probably should not have gone to college in the first place if she had to
take out a large amount of debt.

She doesn't sound like a Gates or a Zuckerberg. They voluntarily dropped out
of college because they knew there was something better they could pursue. Did
she drop out because she had a business idea or did she burn out? There is a
difference.

------
incision
To start off on a tangent...

I often wonder if the 'Like' button and its kin subconsciously encourage
thinking in terms of false dilemmas?

As several others have pointed out this question and so many others in life
come down to 'It depends' yet the lobbying for one definitive stance or the
other goes on endlessly.

I consider myself a high school dropout success, but I'd be hard pressed to
recommend that anyone follow in my footsteps. Also, I'm now persuing a degree
online, nearly 20 years later.

------
Zikes
Isn't it a fallacy to say that the correlation between dropouts and decreased
success means there's a definitive link between them specifically? It's easy
to imagine that people going through a very rough period wound up dropping out
as a result, but that the dropping out is not what put them into a bad spot in
the first place.

~~~
loup-vaillant
While correlation isn't causation, it is certainly _evidence_ for causation.

Plus, in many cases, careful analysis alone can reveal the presence (or
absence) of causation with great certainty.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Correlation is not evidence for causation.

~~~
Fishkins
Why do you say that? It seems clear to me it is. Do you disagree that A being
caused by B usually means A and B correlated[0]? That's all that's necessary
to say correlation is evidence for causation.

0: I know there are some exceptions, but they seem rare.
[http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26300/does-
causatio...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26300/does-causation-
imply-correlation)

