
Examining the Thiel Fellowship: Where are they now? - richardjordan
http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/24/examining-the-thiel-fellowship-where-are-they-now/
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tdfx
"From talking to them, many express that these experience have
focused/clarified what they hope to gain from college, intellectually and
personally."

As someone who made money on the internet in my teen years, I too spent quite
a bit of time thinking college was a waste. For a lot of people, I still think
it's a waste of their money, just that my reasoning is different.

Everyone can benefit from college, but you really need to be in the correct
mindset to succeed and take advantage of it. Academic institutions, despite
the grant process, politics, etc. really are interesting places where really
smart people get together to do things.

The problem I see with college is that most of the people I knew weren't ready
to be there. It should not be the default life funnel that it currently is,
because most high schoolers (myself included) just weren't ready to take
advantage of what was there. When you're ready for it, it's worth every penny.

edit: Sorry, didn't reply to correct post with that quote.

~~~
argonaut
What is the "correct mindset?"

~~~
bcbrown
Internal instead of external motivation to learn, I think.

I took a year off before college, lived on my own, and worked in a warehouse.
For me, it was a great idea, and I think I got more out of college because of
it.

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richardjordan
College is broken in many ways. By definition this isn't a solution because
you cannot do this for more than a tiny number of people. It's interesting
that it appears desirable to return to college anyway afterwards, which
suggests it's really just a resume builder and not much of an alternative at
all. Still, I am always interested in anything which tries to shake up the
status quo because the current college system isn't working, and the idea of
just chucking more people through college really doesn't solve anything to
solve our long term problems.

~~~
jacoblyles
The amount of money the fellowship gives is about the same as two years worth
of tuition at Stanford. In what ways is it not scalable?

~~~
richardjordan
Yes but students pay for going to Stanford they're not paid to go. For this
program to replace college someone has to pay for the fellowships. Hence not
scalable. Money flows to student in one and away from student on other, no?

~~~
osnr
Actually, Stanford does essentially pay students to go. Each undergraduate
student costs Stanford about twice as much as they pay in tuition. This is
typically the case at elite colleges, which is why they spend so much time
seeking donations from alumni.

(Also, the vast majority of students don't pay full tuition anyway because of
the extensive financial aid systems at these schools.)

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-
selection...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-
selection/383286-net-university-spending-per-student.html)

[http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-
Subsidy-...](http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-
Trends-Production.pdf)

~~~
jdotjdot
That can't be right. First, your Delta study is woefully lacking in school -
specific information. Second, the college confidential link's methodology
seems to be missing a lot to me, particularly in the way of revenue. For
example, for many universities (eg UPenn) the parking department is actually a
huge revenue driver that must be taken into account to calculate overall
university P&L, and that kind of thing is completely ignored here. Schools are
businesses; you can't just ignore the other sources of revenue. As such, those
estimates are hugely over inflated. Is Yale really spending $100k PER STUDENT
each year? How could that possibly be?

Let's look at Stanford. Wolfram Alpha claims 6532 undergrads, $37380 tuition
per year. If student cost was truly double tuition, Stanford would be
operating at a loss of $244.4MM per year, and (all other considerations aside)
the $12.6BB endowment would be gone in 50 years. Ultimately, the reported cost
is often based on some key assumptions that aren't always stated, and I'm
pretty sure we as a population don't actually have much clarity on the true
cost of educating a student, if it's even possible to really quantify such a
thing (try measuring the monetary cost of creating a supportive environment or
a caring teacher).

~~~
osnr
I'm not sure why you find this so a priori implausible.

You're right that the CC link misses revenue sources -- but isn't that the
point? Stanford seems to be using money from non-student revenue sources to
subsidize a majority of per-student expenses. (That is, students are getting
"paid.")

Or are you assuming that all that other revenue still comes from students
(e.g. parking), or directly from an unchanging endowment? Stanford raises
hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from people who aren't students
every year, more than enough to cover that $244.4m shortfall directly. Direct
income from students is only a small part of the overall university budget:
<http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances>

Anyway, I'm only making a factual spending claim here. I make no claim about
the effectiveness of the spending in educating students -- that's a separate
issue.

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lquist
_And in January, the unemployment rate for college grads was 3.7 percent, as
opposed to 8.1 percent for those with only high school diplomas.

Those are average numbers across the board, and perhaps the opportunities that
come from a high-profile program like the Thiel Fellowship outweigh those for
the average college student. But at least for now, the data shows college is
the more lucrative path._

??

Correlation does not imply causation.

~~~
shaldengeki
In general, you're right. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to defend the
claim that there is no causative relationship whatsoever flowing from college
education to employment. I don't think it's terribly controversial to claim
that employers pretty universally view more education as a positive factor on
job applications, all other things held equal.

edit: to elaborate further, I think you might be bringing up the wrong fallacy
here - at least, if you're looking to highlight the problems with representing
program participants by the general population of high school-educated people.

~~~
lquist
What I'm saying is that it's not obvious that if the student who was admitted
to Harvard decided not to go, he'd make less than the student who was admitted
and did go.

