
Thiel's college dropout plan scrutinized by '60 Minutes' - iProject
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57437953-93/thiels-college-dropout-plan-scrutinized-by-60-minutes/?tag=mncol
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jedberg
The problem with college education in America is that we have stigmatized
vocational school.

Some people just aren't meant to be academics, and that's fine. They will
never excel at school. So let's teach them something that is useful to society
like plumbing or electrical of HVAC.

And now for an anecdote: I was paying a plumber for a job once, and after I
handed him $1000 for the 4 hours of work he had done, he told me that his kid
(who had been his apprentice for the job) was in college on a sports
scholarship, but planned on taking over the family plumbing business upon
graduation because it was far more lucrative than anything he'd be able to get
with his college degree in humanities.

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throwaway55-33
The high wages of the plumber are naturally a function of supply and demand.
They are often in part a result of a dearth or even a complete absence of
competition.

If there were an overabundance of available skilled plumbers in every
community, the wages might drop.

Needless to say, in any given US community there is often a shortage of
available skilled plumbers but rarely a shortage of young people with college
degrees.

PayPal, Thiel's claim to fame, had one competitor: X.com. And they merged.

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jedberg
This is a fair point -- if vocational school were more widely promoted, there
would be more people with vocational training and the wages would go down.
However, I still think it would settle into a reasonable level of
compensation, and regardless, there will always be a base level of demand to
be met as long as we keep using electricity and indoor plumbing.

~~~
throwaway55-33
What I find interesting in your anecdote is the son chose to attend university
and develop his talent as an athlete before starting full-time work as a
plumber.

Even though the university experience might not have a monetary "return on
investment", he chose to pursue it.

Now, it's also worth noting he's on scholarship. Whether that was the deciding
factor in his choice to attend we cannot be sure just from what you've told
us.

But nontheless he is investing his time at the university when he could be
doing plumbing jobs and making money (or, by analogy, working on a startup
that a certain VC has an interest in).

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cj
I was a finalist for Thiel's 20 under 20 program last month (i was rejected).
During interviews, I met the other finalists and current fellows who dropped
out of school for this program 1 year ago.

The two main problems I saw:

* Their projects were much more academic than entrepreneurial. About half of the fellows are working on very technical projects like making better CAD software, robotic bioautomation, microorganisms to solve global warming, etc. Many seem like they'd be better served in academic environments

* Most of the current fellows do not seem self-sustaining, which may become problematic at the end of their fellowship

IMO it's a good program for the few that are working on startups and need some
cash to be able to drop out of school, but I worry that it's doing a
disservice to the academic oriented fellows.

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got2surf
I'm commenting as a high school senior who has a few start up plans and is
still going to college this fall.

First off, I take fault with the entire "college is overpriced" deal - that's
only without financial aid. Harvard costs 60k sticker, but costs around 20k or
so after financial aid (with 2/3 of people receiving aid). If you make 150k a
year, you'll pay 10% of your income on tuition, it's not a massive 60k expense
for most people.

But secondly, life's always about thinking, and it's always going to be about
thinking. For purposes of developing education, nothing develops thinking like
college, literally. We have no other social institution that fosters the same
long-term interaction, learning, and application as college. But even more
importantly, college is crucial for general life development, for learning
about the world, meeting girls/guys, and all of the misadventures that we tend
to take lessons from.

I have over 2000 hours of research in an emerging field, and I'm interested in
starting a company on it, but it's not worth skipping college over. It may be
worth taking a gap year (which seems more in line with the original Thiel
philosophy) but I'm sure I'll have time to fit in a budding startup after
classes. If the startup looks promising, and becomes less risky, then sure,
it's worth taking a break from college. But until that point, college is a
great investment; if you're going to invest in anything, why not invest in
yourself?

But with all that being said.. the Thiel application has a few major
similarities to the college app process. Thiel recipients probably did well in
school, maybe in math/science competitions, have good ideas and are
communicative. These skills probably got them into top schools
(Ivy/MIT/Stanford). But because the Thiel program is a selection process in
itself, it still provides some guidance and is at least better than an
unstructured 4 years of skipping college.

Oh and one more thought: people will always care about credentials, which
prove that you can do what you say you do. Starting a company, participating
in Thiel, or going to a top school all count as credentials - but dropping out
of college doesn't guarantee any of those three, and in that sense, is a very
risky decision.

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jiggy2011
"The average plumber makes as much as the average doctor" , _really_?

I assume somebody is using a very creative definition of one of those.

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prezjordan
Plumbers make a LOT of money. Source: just knowing plumbers.

~~~
rickdangerous1
right. And its a mistake to conflate, "income" with "reported income for
income tax purposes".

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christianbryant
I tested out of High School a year early and moved to Los Angeles to focus on
only what I wanted to do: Act, write, direct. I'm probably not representative
of everyone in technology without a college degree, but nevertheless, when I
realized Dream #1 wasn't happening, I tool my tech experience in retail to the
start-up world, and then settled in to a decent career, which is only getting
better with time. Part of me agrees with all this, but with a grain of salt.
It's not the path for everyone. Put me in a room of geeks and I can hold my
own; put me in a group of more well-rounded folks, fans of opera and the like
(tongue in cheek, folks), I couldn't hold my own and would be bored to death.
But that's not just due to personal taste, but a total lack of exposure.

My mother never encouraged me to go to school and I spent all my time in my
room reading SciFi and Fantasy novels. But I was very smart, and now that I
have a kid of my own, I see that same intelligence in her and, guess what, I'm
sending her to college. No matter what. She'll have opportunities to do great
things, and I wouldn't fault her for pausing college to work on a start-up
company, but I would fault her for not finishing school, even if it took a
decade or two. See, I want her to be able to sit in that room with all the
socialites and hold her own, as easily as she could in a room full of geeks.
That said, until the United States improves its view of education and makes
some radical changes, my daughter will NOT be going to college in the States.
Maybe University of Helsinki? :)

Good luck to all the Thiel Fellows. I think it is needed, for both an
_alternative_ and as a reminder to folks in the States that there is a serious
problem with the education system...

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tatsuke95
> _"We have a bubble in education, like we had a bubble in housing...everybody
> believed you had to have a house, they'd pay whatever it took," says Thiel.
> "Today, everybody believes that we need to go to college, and people will
> pay -- whatever it takes."_

And now we have a bubble in technology, and investors need naive kids churning
out products so they can catch lightning in a bottle. And they'll pay whatever
it takes.

~~~
mkramlich
I think you're both right. Thiel is right that most folks don't need to go to
college and it's horribly over-priced, etc. You're right that we have a lot of
investors with a large personal self-ish financial interest in having as many
developers and engineers, especially younger/cheaper ones, available to
execute on their startup ideas and/or to "invest" (buy lottery tickets on) in
them. So you're both right. No contradiction.

~~~
SudarshanP
But look at it from a student's point of view. In case he gets a useless
education and a huge loan, the student's life is ruined. If he gets some money
from a "me too angel" and works on a non idea and fails... he still gains
valuable experience and knows more about the real world and programming and a
wealthy guy becomes a little less wealthy. From a student's point of view this
is probably the best time to learn and let some one else foot the bill ;-)

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hristov
Does the average plumber make as much as the average doctor? Some quick
googling gives the average plumber salary as about 40K. [1] The same site will
give you a bunch of doctor's salaries by specialty the lowest one of which
seems to be about 170K for a general practitioner.

[1] <http://www1.salary.com/Plumber-I-Salary.html>

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rodglez
He was probably talking about lifetime earnings and not yearly income. If you
factor in the 11-19 years of additional training and lost income that doctors
go through and make a plumber work the same amount of hours as a doctor, then
I bet their lifetime earnings will be close.

Heres a post comparing doctors to UPS drivers, which shows what i'm talking
about <http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html>

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dbecker
People frequently talk about college as if you can only go when you are 18.

If a budding entrepreneur skips college at 18, he can still go back later.

Skipping college at 18 still may not be the right thing to do... but these
conversations frequently overplay the finality of the decision.

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prezjordan
Has he actually paid anyone with his deal yet? Just curious.

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BlackJack
Yeah, three of my friends are "Thiel fellows". You can check out all of them
here: <http://www.thielfellowship.org/>

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temphn
Does the average plumber make more than the average college graduate? That is
the real question. If it's even close, especially after accounting for student
loans, that is an indictment of the current higher ed system.

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JosephRedfern
I think he (Thiel) is probably right.

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nutjob123
I think that you should explain why you feel this way instead of simply
asserting your (possibly) gut reaction.

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lhnn
My friend and I were debating this topic today. We both agree that ideally, a
well rounded education in the arts and sciences is optimal. However, is it
necessary for the skilled completion of many trades? I don't think so.

I think high school has started to fail as an educational mechanism.

Let's face it: There are many, many stupid people in the world who will never
be that bright. Be it from biological or parental reasons, there are many who
will not grasp intricate logic, higher math and philosophy, etc.

Also, many students are capable of beginning higher education in high school.
Programming, engineering, even medical studies could be started in the teen
years of the brightest students. But we're not fulfilling that potential at
the moment.

tl;dr high school should be more challenging, and we should accept that not
everyone should go to college.

~~~
chocolatebunny
The problem is that nobody is ready to determine their career path at the end
of grade school.

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knieveltech
Germany finds your argument unpersuasive:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:High_schools_in_German...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:High_schools_in_Germany)

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jasonlotito
FTL: "As the German school system differs slightly from the Anglo-Saxon
system, these high schools are Gymnasiums. This corresponds more likely
between high school and college. The university exam, the "abitur" is often
compared to a high school diploma in the United States, it is academically
closer to the associate degree of a US college"

So, I don't see how Germany is any different.

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josephcooney
It is weird seeing Germans contrasted with Anglo-saxon, since both the Angles
and Saxons were German tribes originally. I guess there has been a lot of
'water under the bridge' since then.

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commonersense
Why don't we ask plumbers what they think of a college education? And how it
feels to go through life without one. Do wealthy plumbers want their kids to
skip college to become wealthy plumbers?

~~~
barrkel
For people who are good with their hands, don't enjoy academia and don't
navigate institutions and bureaucracies well (whether from temperament or lack
of access to that kind of knowledge in the family etc.), the trades are a kind
of passport. They let you earn a healthy income, find decent work almost
anywhere in the world (provided you can get a visa etc.), and ultimately set
up an independent business and earn as much as you're willing to work for.

To be frank, I think programming may be better suited to a trade-oriented
approach for many people, with only a relatively small academic oriented
aspect for things like discrete mathematics.

