
Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel - kevruger
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/friends-don%e2%80%99t-let-friends-take-education-advice-from-peter-thiel/
======
hristov
The dean of the Stanford engineering school has a very good point. Peter
Thiel's dropout scholarhips are very much a rigged experiment.

First he is going to select the brightest kids in the best schools. These kids
already have higher than usual chance of success. Then he is going to give
them 100k each. That will also increase their chances of success. Then he is
going help them with advice and networking as much as he can which will also
increase their chances of success.

This is all good and well. I have no problem with Peter Thiel helping a bunch
of kids with money advice and networking.

But THEN he is going to say "look, my dropouts succeeded therefore education
sucks therefore you are better off dropping out." A lot of kids will drop out
when they are not the best in the class, when they do not have the help of
Peter Thiel, and they will be fucked.

Thus, as a social experiment Peter Thiel's dropout scholarships are worthless.
They do not show anything unless Mr. Thiel creates a control group by
investing in kids that do stay in school or investing in kids that just
graduated college.

Again this is usually not a problem (not all charity needs to be a social
experiment) except for the fact that Peter Thiel obviously wants to use his
scholarships as a social experiment. He wants to use them as something to
criticize colleges and education with.

Peter Thiel is a very smart person (and ironically also very well educated) so
he knows very well this is a rigged experiment. He designed it this way. He
has an agenda, and this is to bring out some kind of libertarian utopia to the
US. He thinks that academia stands in the way of this political goal and he
wants to attack and destroy academia by destroying academic institutions. None
of this is a conspiracy theory, he is actually pretty open about all of the
above.

And again, I do not have a problem with that in general, any American has a
right to be politically active, and to work to bring about what he believes
are positive political changes to his/her country.

But again he is using a rigged social experiment in his fight against
academia. As bystanders we should be very well aware that this experiment
means absolutely nothing and resist his urges to conclude that it means that
education is worthless.

~~~
Eliezer
This is not an experiment. This is challenging the blind assumption of higher
education, taking direct aim at the prestige of higher education, and
disproving the belief that anyone who can stays in college and that people who
drop out are automatically losers. Peter Thiel is saying with his money that
he believes that bright, ambitious people are better off staying out of
college. Will this prove it to the rigorous standards of science? No. Feel
free to donate another $2M if you want to run that experiment your way.

~~~
_delirium
Do people actually hold that assumption to begin with? There are already
plenty of examples of successful dropouts, Bill Gates being one of the more
famous. They're talked about in mainstream media relatively frequently, and
most Americans know about them. The skepticism is over what the odds are if an
average person tries it without connections & assistance, not whether it's
_possible_ , especially if it's relatively few kids who are explicitly given
money/connections/assistance. I don't see this initiative as doing much to
address that particular piece of skepticism.

I don't even oppose Thiel's initiative, I just don't think it has particularly
broad implications. If the non-college-attending kids in his program do well,
a reasonable conclusion to draw is: if you have someone willing to give you
$100k and introduce you to good business connections, in lieu of attending
university, then that is quite possibly a good opportunity to take.

If you _don't_ have such an offer, on the other hand...

------
cjy
Of course engineering school deans are going to think dropping out is a bad
idea. The guy at Best Buy will also try to convince you to buy a warranty on
your flat screen T.V.

There are definitely some good reasons to stay in school, but this article
rubbed me the wrong way. Take for example, a couple of the arguments
presented:

Argument: You get a lot of valuable social connections from being in school.
Counterargument: You will meet others and learn from your peers by surrounding
yourself by smart interesting people, but this doesn't have to be at a
university. Why not connect with smart ambitious people of all ages that are
working in your field? If the main value of elite colleges is that they screen
bright students and bring them together for 40K a year, the students are
getting ripped off.

Argument: Mark Zuckerberg was successful because he was vetted and educated by
Harvard. Counterargument: This seems highly unlikely. No one used Facebook
because they knew the developer was Harvard educated. And, Zuckerberg was an
accomplished hacker before he came to Harvard.

Argument: Most successful entrepreneurs are not drop outs. Counterargument:
That is because most people who try entrepreneurship are not drop outs. A
better question is whether drop outs who start businesses are more or less
likely to succeed. An even better question, is whether the same person is more
likely to succeed if he/she drops out. Unfortunately, the last question is
impossible to answer.

~~~
timr
_"Of course engineering school deans are going to think dropping out is a bad
idea."_

This is an _ad hominem_ , dressed up nicely. And from the article that I just
read (maybe we're being A/B tested for ideology?), nearly all of the deans
made clear exceptions for exceptional students. What a bunch of higher-
education zealots.

You also got the "arguments" wrong. All of them. _None_ of the deans made an
argument for greater success due to social connections (Wadwha _makes fun_ of
this idea at the top of the article!), _none_ claimed that Zuckerberg was
successful "because" of his time at Harvard (one made the argument that he
"needed it for vetting", which is a different argument entirely), and _none_
made the argument that "most" entrepreneurs are college grads (...or anything
at all, for that matter; except for the rather uncontroversial argument that
_"most entrepreneurs fail"_ , very few generalizations were made).

The most important arguments were the ones that you ignored:

1) Thiel's "experiment" isn't actually an experiment. It's a vanity exercise
that will prove nothing, because it has no controls.

2) Most entrepreneurs fail, but you can easily point to the exceptions to make
(fallacious) arguments about the value of education.

3) An engineering degree improves the _average_ outcome for students, even if
it doesn't help the exceptional cases.

4) At the companies founded by famous college dropouts, you'd be incredibly
hard-pressed to get a job without a college degree.

~~~
cjy
The first quote wasn't an ad hominem attack because it wasn't directed at the
engineering deans, but rather at the author. If you're trying to determine
whether people should drop out of school why would you only survey deans to
make a point? Moreover, it is perfectly valid to note the conflict of interest
a speaker may have. Their incentives don't make their arguments wrong, but it
should give us caution before making generalization or relying on their
expertise.

I think we're talking past each other to a certain extent. The deans do make
some good points. 1-4 are generally true. I just don't think they are
sufficient evidence to show that students shouldn't drop out. They are saying
that colleges are good social networks and send important signals to
employers. My argument is that something is wrong when we are spending 100K on
a screening/networking mechanism. Notice that none of the deans said stay in
school because of the things you'll learn in the classroom.

~~~
dlo
"Notice that none of the deans said stay in school because of the things
you'll learn in the classroom."

The second-to-last paragraph of Jim Plummer's response seems to say so.
Example: "A university education gives the large majority the tools to become
innovators and entrepreneurs throughout their lives." He then goes onto extol
the benefits of an engineering education even for careers outside engineering.

------
ak217
Wadhwa ends up helping Thiel's cause, not challenging it. He starts by
proclaiming his bias and stating he "asked three [engineering deans] to help
me quench this fire". But the deans try to challenge it with statements like
"most will fail", "they aren't ready", "it would be a good thing if more
[cohort] stayed in school", "it's unlikely they'll succeed", "getting an
engineering degree reduces variance in your career..." Can those responses get
more stereotypical?

He's right that students will take Thiel's message very seriously. His message
is emotional, inspirational, anti-authority, and anti-establishment. And it's
impossible to counter with those kinds of responses.

Also, the experiment that the Stanford dean describes is impossible to run,
and the closest possible thing has already been realized. The people who want
to drop out to take responsibility and start a venture are self-selecting. You
can't just randomly assign roles like "you'll stay in school" and "you'll go
to a startup" because the students would be emotionally invested in either
decision. And many of them do already receive huge no-strings-attached
financial assistance to stay in school.

------
abstractbill
_There is no control group. Why not pick 40 very bright young people and give
half of them $100K to start a company and the other half $100K to stay in
school and complete their education?_

That would be a really interesting and exciting experiment. I wish someone
would do it.

~~~
alxp
That wouldn't give you a control group, either, that would give you a new set
of students, and would let you answer the question "how successful are
students hwo graduate without being crippled by student debt compered with
dropouts and a control group of students how received no special assistance
and graduated anyway."

I would be very interested in this experiment, but subsidizing a student's
education in the US doesn't give you a 'control' group, but a very privileged
group.

------
mmaunder
Context:

"Vivek Wadhwa is .. a Faculty and Advisor, Singularity University, Visiting
Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School,
Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research
Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at
The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University."

Wadhwa is a beneficiary of the college fees he is advocating paying. He's
doing it under the guise of promoting education in general and has conflated
Theil's argument with an anti-education argument.

The title of the article he's refuting is:

"Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher
Education."

One of Thiel's best points in the original article:

If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a
difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100
Harvard affiliates? It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In
education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is
invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to
ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if
they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.

~~~
aksbhat
Harvard affiliates? There are no Harvard affiliates but there are higher
education affiliates, which are called as universities. Harvard itself is one
such affiliate in some sense.

Universities are a result of Theory of The Firm, since a university is
generally restricted to small geographic region, it can decrease the
transaction costs between the various components of higher education. However
if you franchise a university across multiple locations, the net transaction
costs go up.

E.g. University of California system can be considered as an affiliate system.
However you would still find one UC e.g. Berkeley more reputed than other e.g.
Santa Barbara.

Peter Thiel incorrectly assumes, that a University system can share a lot of
resources between distant geographic locations. However most of the resources
such as faculty, labs cannot be shared. Thus you are better off increase
capacity of students rather than branching out.

~~~
Duff
Rapacious universities are testing the theory of creating affiliates in
pursuit of more money. NYU, Cornell, Texas A&M, and Carnegie-Mellon are
opening up campuses in the UAE to pull in some more money.

------
richcollins
_Try getting a job at Microsoft, Facebook, or Apple if you don’t have a
degree. There is almost no chance that you will make it past HR._

Bullshit. There are plenty of people at those companies that never got a
degree but proved themselves in other ways (open source, made popular apps ...
etc).

~~~
byrneseyeview
Indeed. If your career-seeking paradigm involves going through HR, of course
you're going to want to go to college. If your career goal is as much success
as possible, even when you accept higher variance, college looks like a worse
deal.

------
kenjackson
One thing that struck me about this debate is college athletics. In particular
basketball and football as athletes in those sports tend to make money from
day 1 in college (although the money is made for the college/NCAA). Despite
the fact that there are minor league versions for both of these sports, they
aren't well regarded.

It would seem like minor league basketball is what Thiel is advocating, yet no
one is interested in going to it, nor recruiting from it. The best players are
recruited from college, and that seems to be the way everyone likes it.

There are always the occassional superstars at a young age --
Gates/Zuckerberg...James/Bryant, but they are clearly rare and imitating them
is almost certainly folly. No one would suggest recruiting directly from high
school is a good idea on a scale of more than a couple of athletes per year
(at most). Just thoughts.

~~~
danenania
I think the primary difference between athletics and entrepreneurship is the
natural talent/experience equation. In a sport like basketball, a certain
level of inborn talent and physical prowess is required. No amount of practice
and experience will get you into the pros if you don't have the talent to
begin with. There are also strongly diminishing returns for experience because
as you get smarter about the game, physical aging reduces your abilities in
other ways.

Entrepreneurship is extremely different because experience holds much more
weight and can easily overcome a lack of natural talent (in a skill like
programming, for instance), or open up a new role. Someone who drops out of
school to join the NBA and then gets laughed at by recruiters is basically
screwed. Someone who drops out of school to build a prototype and gets laughed
at by VCs or customers now has much more practical experience than his friends
who are still in school and is in a good position to either try again or look
for a job with the valuable skills he's gained through his failed attempt.

All this talk of 'superstars' and 'lottery winners' completely misses the
point. If you want to be an entrepreneur, trying to be an entrepreneur,
regardless of how badly you fail, is guaranteed to teach you relevant skills.
Expensive colleges are not.

~~~
kenjackson
But this doesn't answer why aren't the minor leagues a bigger deal? I'd argue
that most basketball players, even those that are really strong, feel that
college offers two things that the minor/farm leagues don't:

1) The best colleagues. The best US ballers not in the NBA play NCAA ball. Not
the NBA farm league. Colleges, from the Ivies to the UCs, are where the best
students are. The benefit of going to college is you're around the best CS
students AND the best physics, bio, literature, econ, and math students.

2) It's a hedge. While college degrees aren't on the forefront of the minds of
college players, especially D1 players, it is something that is in the
equation. There is a belief that they can be spotted for the NBA by playing
college ball, and if it doesn't work out, they still get a college degree
(unless they go to USC).

The only thing that twists this up is athletes get a full ride scholarship.
And many here complain that college costs too much. But recall that the best
students will have their college paid for them (and in some countries college
is free). Cost ends up being inversely proportional to perceived potential
(with need factored in too).

This ends up being almost exactly the scenario that Thiel is advocating. Top
students get lots of funding. Less good students get a little. Average
students get none, and rich students with average potential fund things out of
their own pocket. Those who are poor with average potential are just screwed.
Welcome to college in 2011.

------
tygorius
While I think there's something to be said for Wadhwa's point in the context
of the engineering field, in the larger context it seems pretty clear we've
peaked in an education market bubble. Think about all those kids with liberal
arts degrees. Heck, even law schools have seen a sudden drop in applications.

Along those lines, I can't be the only one who was surprised that one of his
closing examples was Steve Jobs, the famous Reed College dropout. After all,
Jobs has stated the importance of his dropping in to calligraphy classes and
how it exposed him to the issues of typography, etc. I don't think I've ever
heard Jobs talk about the importance of a visual arts degree from a
prestigious university, however.

As for the argument that Microsoft or Apple won't look at applications that
don't have degrees, well, yes. But in this forum how often have we read of
startups choosing their original teams based on prestigious degrees? If you
can make something new and useful, are you really worried about HR liking your
resume or are you more concerned with finding ways to make your own company
happen?

------
phwd
Vivek went to American Society for Engineering Education Engineering Deans
Institute. I am not really sure what kind of response he was expecting other
than the one presented to him.

Ask HN, is it really an unbiased article when you take their responses, and
not for example, students or recent graduates ?

~~~
williamdix
Certainly one can expect their responses to be pro-higher-education. However,
I feel like their justification for their responses is the enlightening part.
I believe they are correct to point out that Thiel is relying on anecdotal
evidence and to criticize his conclusions based on said evidence. They also
acknowledge that, in some cases, there are people who do not need higher
education. So, while their overall viewpoints are not unexpected, there is
plenty to be gained from their support of their viewpoints.

As to whether it is an unbiased article, I don't think it ever claimed to be.
It seemed to me to be clearly the author stating his opinion and presenting
the opinions of some engineering school dean.

------
liuliu
The whole argument of "bubble" is not about importance of higher education,
rather, it argues that the cost is not justified.

As a side note, I applied Facebook for internship when I have taken no CS
classes in my college at all, and they accepted me. I am not sure how "true"
his last paragraph about applying job in Facebook without a degree would be.

~~~
Deepta1980
Have you applied for a real job at Facebook? Internship is not the same as
hiring you as a real employee.

------
thebigredjay
Tom Katsouleas "It is during one’s undergraduate years that one discovers
oneself, where one fits into the world and what it means to be human."*

Four years and $200,000 for a piece of paper and a false understanding of
where you fit into the world.

~~~
eropple
Or, in my case, less than $25,000 for a piece of paper, some very valuable
formal instruction that I draw on today (and, more importantly, knowledgeable
people who at the time could put it into a context I could understand), some
great contacts, some great work experience, an environment where I could take
the time to build projects to improve what I know about my profession and my
craft without worrying about making rent, and the ability to actually spell
"piece". Pretty good trade.

If you spend $200,000 on undergrad, you're making a mistake. That does not
make college a bad idea; it makes spending insane private-school money on
college a bad idea.

~~~
keiferski
Even a public school education (at in-state rates) will run you 40-50k minimum
these days.

~~~
eropple
Depends. Can you work? Can you hustle? There's a lot of free money there if
you're willing to get it: I will have paid, all told, less than $25,000 for my
education, excluding housing because I elected to spend more than really
necessary, via scholarships.

A lot of the rest was paid for by working during school--I had the lame little
jobs during school, but I also participated in Google Summer of Code and had a
pretty healthy consulting company that I started and operated, employing
friends of mine when I had more work than I could handle. Like I said--less
than $25,000 for the whole kit and kaboodle, thanks to what really amounted to
not a lot of work to make that happen. (It also had the nice side effect of
giving me a really nice resume.)

~~~
keiferski
Well, to use my school as an example:

In-state tuition is about 14-15k. Room and board is 5-6k. That's easily 20k a
year (I paid north of 22k my first year) leading to 80-100k over four years.
Not exactly something you can work through on a <$10/hour job (of which I have
had many).

~~~
eropple
Those numbers sound pretty much like mine. They're also pretty meaningless
thanks to the incredible opportunities for scholarships at nearly any school
you'll care to look at. After scholarships, between family and myself I'll pay
around $33,000 at the end of the day (the discrepancy between the
aforementioned $25K being the additional housing and other expenses I chose to
incur over the most fiscally responsible decisions).

I left school with $9,800 in debt. Most of the amount paid off before
graduation (at least 60%) was mine, the rest my parents'.

No, you can't work through it on a sub-$10/hour job. But I had those jobs,
too: they were beer and social money. I set up my own consulting company and I
did GSoC and made more than enough to put myself in a really good position
coming out of school.

~~~
keiferski
Scholarships are pretty hard to come by for an above-average, white, middle
class guy.

College isn't as affordable for most as it was for you.

~~~
eropple
I am a white, middle-class guy. I don't know if I'm above-average or not, but
I busted my ass to get ahead.

~~~
keiferski
I don't doubt it. I'm just saying that for your average person, college isn't
cheap. It's cool that you made it work, but for the majority of the
population, college isn't an affordable option.

~~~
eropple
I don't think you'll find many people who'd say that college is right for
everyone, or affordable for everyone. (I would say that, for any given person,
if they're driven and dedicated, it's probably affordable. But that excludes a
lot of the population.)

I would, however, say that the majority of people in the startup world who
seem to have a clue have had _some_ college at the least, and that it's very
valuable in and of itself for those people--which makes me think Thiel very
misguided.

------
triviatise
The core issue is that a university education is necessary for a majority of
people. It is a generalist education that fails to prepare people for any
aspect of the work force. Most people should be going to vocational schools
that in 1-2 years prepare them to be a novice in that field. Universities have
done a great job of brainwashing to convince everyone that being a CS major at
a third tier school is better than going to a 1-2 year software vocational
program and starting to learn to program on the job right away(which hardly
exist anyway).

------
dr_
I agree that a college education is undoubtedly important, especially in
certain fields such as engineering, but these deans don't seem to pay any
importance to the cost of education. It's going up at an unsustainable rate.
If an undergrad education at any great school, Ivy league/Stanford or not,
were about 40-50K for 4 years, then I doubt even Peter Thiel would argue
against it (although I don't know for sure). But the problem is that the cost
of attending such a university are growing at a staggering pace, whereas the
cost of starting a software/internet based business in the same time frame has
actually been going down at a staggering pace. The risk of failure may remain
high, but the costs of failure keep getting lower, so you can't blame students
for at least asking the question whether or not they should drop out. Sure you
may argue there is an opportunity cost associated with leaving a university -
but that keeps decreasing as the costs of attending that university increase.
What happens when a 4 year education is $400,000?

~~~
usaar333
A public school is about 40k to 50k over 4 years, before living expenses. In
CS, internship salaries are large enough to break-even over 4 years.

------
fleitz
I think the issue is not so much with education but schooling, of course being
educated is essential to success but what isn't essential is spending $250K on
an Ivy League degree. Peter didn't say 'be ignorant' he said spending $250K on
an Ivy League education is a waste of money and that the asset is overpriced.

There is a price where Harvard makes sense, however $250K isn't it.

~~~
_delirium
I'm not sure it changes the general point, but Harvard in particular is much
cheaper for most people. Students from families making under $60k/yr are not
charged any tuition, and those under $180k/yr are charged 10% of their family
income. So, for example, a student whose family makes $150k/yr would pay
$15k/yr, or $60k over 4 years. Only students from quite well off families
would pay anything near $250k. (And those reductions are outright tuition
reductions, not loans.)

------
andrewflnr
>Of course, the other reason one should not take Peter >Thiel’s advice is that
the value of education is >intrinsic and an end in itself rather than
something >to be measured by its career financial return. It is >during one’s
undergraduate years that one discovers >oneself, where one fits into the world
and what it >means to be human.

Sorry, but I just don't believe I need to go to a university to find out "how
I fit into the world and what it means to be human." Isn't going out and
actually building something useful for the world also a way to find your
place?

A university education certainly has value, and may help you find "what it
means to be human", but can the author really assert that it's the only or
even the best way?

------
petegrif
If we set aside for a moment the worthy and edifying nature of education and
focus on today's cost Thiel has a legitimate point. In a world in which
employment opportunities are shrinking taking on a huge amount of debt for a
qualification which apparently doesn't afford job prospects and a salary which
are in line with such debt is a widespread and unsustainable problem. And this
is a problem which is becoming acute. Education costs continue to rise even as
economic prospects become more precarious. Those of us who live in the US
cannot count on continued economic global dominance to underwrite domestic
full employment. This is a huge change we are barely starting to get our heads
around.

------
Taylorious
The problems with higher education don’t solely rest on the universities; the
consumers are equally to blame. I’m sick of people talking about going in dept
200k to get a bachelors degree. If you paid 40k or even 15k a year on liberal
arts you’re a fool who deserves to be saddled with dept. Honestly, the liberal
arts education the average student gets pales in comparison to what an
intellectually curious person would get by visiting the library regularly,
searching the web, and watching documentaries. There are plenty of ways people
can drastically reduce the cost of education such as testing out of classes,
going to community college (hell a reasonably ambitious student can take
college classes in high school), etc. As for the meat of your bachelor’s
degree, well that’s where university choice comes in.

Perspective students need to research colleges more. A lot of kids think that
just because they did well in school and were told they were smart their whole
life that they have to go to an Ivy League school or some other very expensive
prestigious school. There are many universities that offer an as good or
better education for a much better value. Sure Harvard may employ people who
are titans in their field, Nobel Prize winners and the like, but unless you
are going to Grad school there it won’t affect you any. They won’t be teaching
you, TAs will. And even if they did, they would be teaching you out of the
same text books as the adjunct professors at your local community college
uses. Do people think that if they go to undergrad at Princeton a Nobel Prize
winning professor will personally mentor them or something?

I’m currently a senior taking a break from cramming for finals, and when I
graduate I will graduate with a degree from a school that has high job
placement in my field (CS) and that I feel has prepared me very well. And I
will do it without going in to dept at all. Not a dime. I’m going to be able
to do this because I went to community college for my liberal arts, tested out
of classes, lived off campus, worked part time, took advantage of transfer
scholarships for high GPA, grants, tax rebates, etc. In short I PLANNED things
out and worked hard in all aspects of my life not just school. I know
countless students who will be graduating with ridiculous debts because they
didn’t plan at all. They got out of high school and just hopped in to college
never thinking about the dept for a minute. What’s really sad is that many of
them will have degrees that aren’t worth shit unless they go to grad school,
or they will get jobs that pay horribly for the amount of initial investment.
I’m not as pessimistic about higher education as a lot of people on here, but
I definitely have my issues with it. I just think that people are diverting a
lot of the blame from the students/parents/mentors to the colleges.

~~~
ekiru
> Sure Harvard may employ people who are titans in their field, Nobel Prize
> winners and the like, but unless you are going to Grad school there it won’t
> affect you any. They won’t be teaching you, TAs will.

Is this actually true? I don't attend Harvard, but I do attend a private
university in the top 10 of the US News and World Reports rankings, and I
don't believe there is a single CS course taught by a grad student (although
some are taught by "lecturers". Some of the classes from the core curriculum
are taught by grad students, but that's not actually necessarily a bad thing.
Both of the grad students who have taught courses I've taken have been
excellent teachers, which can be much more important for a teacher of
introductory calculus or such.

~~~
ekiru
> I don't believe there is a single CS course taught by a grad student

Actually, this is incorrect. Although I'm not aware of any courses taught by
grad students this year, I now recall that one of the lecturers also taught
while a Ph.D. candidate. However, only a small minority of CS courses here
seem to be taught by grad students.

------
tcgore
I tend to agree that there is an education bubble, just not in engineering or
the sciences.

Any English or history major has access to the same loans that an engineering
or biology major has, but on average, they are likely to make far less in
income. Should _what_ you are studying be a factor in loan applications? I
think so.

Another side of the same coin on income inequality (pure numbers, not social
justice) is that most universities (that I am aware of) charge the same for
all degrees, regardless of earning potential. Someone majoring in elementary
education will almost always have a smaller return on investment than an
engineering major.

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astrofinch
If Thiel's actions cause smart students to drop out of school and fail at
starting their own companies, that will be great because then the companies
that hire the failed dropouts will have to develop non-school-related methods
for discriminating between the good ones and the bad ones. If those non-
school-related methods become good enough, they'll start using them on
graduates as well, and then there will be actual pressure on schools to
educate students effectively (along with the option of teaching yourself
instead of going to school if that fits your style better).

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byrneseyeview
I'm not sure how surprising it is that academics are defending academia.
Plummer's response is sensible--yes, it's a rigged experiment. On the other
hand, if you genuinely think college is a bad deal, paying people to go to
college is perverse. Thiel isn't so much making a bet as helping people act as
if his bet has already paid off.

Katsouleas just makes a lame rhetorical point. Surely he can do better.

Eisenstein speaks the truth: college is not always the best option. "Getting
an engineering degree reduces the variance in your career outcomes. You might
not get the billions, but you also won’t get into poverty." That's the best
way to understand it. In most financial contexts, cutting your variance also
reduces your expected outcome--and levering up to buy low-variance assets is a
good way to gear yourself for negative outcomes, whether those assets are
degrees or CDOs.

Is there any point more boring than noting that two people who finished school
a decade or two ago now think that school isn't such a good deal? It would be
pretty craven for Thiel and Arrington to believe the things they believe but
lie about it because they'd gone to Stanford, so I'm not sure Wadhwa has a
point.

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ramanujan
A bunch of guys selling a very expensive product, with a direct financial
interest in suppressing this debate...yet no big red "conflict of interest"
disclaimers.

Modern universities are cargo cults. They do not educate, they select. The
value is solely in colocating smart people, which can be done in far less
expensive ways.

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Goladus
This article generally makes better points than Lacy's original, especially
Jim Plummer's comments, but ultimately still doesn't do much more than fan the
flames of the controversy.

Conveniently, perceived controversy is the part that benefits Techcrunch the
most.

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grav1tas
Perhaps Peter Thiel's real master plan is to increase the value of an
education by convincing a lot of people that they shouldn't go to school, and
thus increasing scarcity of those getting degrees. AmIright?

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michaelochurch
1\. Higher education is incredibly valuable and most capable people should get
one if they can. The intellectual discipline college offers for people who
take it seriously is incredibly valuable.

2\. We _are_ in a bubble, sort of. It's not like the tulip bubble or a housing
bubble where the product can be sold to a "greater fool", unless you consider
the bump in hiring a degree provides to be a "sale". The education bubble is
something different: panic-buying fueled by parents who are terrified that
their kids will end up insignificant, taking orders rather than giving them,
if they don't attend the right schools.

It's actually a bidding war over educational cachet and access to limited
resources, coupled with much, much higher expectations of the "college
experience" (that drive costs up even in the cheaper schools). My grandfather
paid $300/year ($4000 today) to go to CMU in the early 1930s. There was also
no expectation that it would provide a state-of-the-art, 25000-SF gym, a
cafeteria serving better food than most restaurants, and an expensive blow-out
concert with free beer every spring.

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mrzerga
lots of good points from both sides, me thinks there is a growing need for
change in the field of education, since the cost, mediocrity, and opportunity
cost of education is growing at an alarming rate. I do not know know what
would solution be - maybe some more real life experiences injected in the
education - say 6 month study/6 month real life - work, startuping, whatever.
me thinks that would provide more opportunities for young people than another
course on greek philosophy instead. education needs to be disrupted, thats how
I feel after I finished uni.

