
Peter Thiel: We’re in a Higher Education Bubble - gsharma
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
======
kenjackson
What Thiel doesn't get is that the reason why it's a bubble is also what keeps
it afloat. It's exclusionary, and something inherent in humans is a desire to
categorize and compartmentalize -- credentials.

Sure, if you're starting a web startup or a basketball team, no one cares
where you went to school (although an offensive lineman in football benefits
from going to a top tier school -- despite football being a meritocracy its
surprisingly difficult to measure how effective linemen are). But the top
lawyers, doctors, professors, and even business managers will be recruited
from where people think the best people are.

The ironic thing is that the only reason people listen to Peter Thiel is
because of his credentials as PayPal co-founder and VC investor. There are a
million people have an opinion on education and tecnology. There's too much
noise -- the ideas that are listened to are those that come from people who
have done soemthing in the past -- a credential. At a massive scale college is
still THE credential.

And surprisingly the internet has actually made elite schools more important,
not less. Pre-internet regional schools were often held in near equal esteem
as Harvard/Yale. As information became more fluid (USNWR and the internet) the
ranking of credentials became easier to obtain. This won't change.

~~~
jonnathanson
Frankly, Thiel's rhetorical "Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?"
question is a reasonable one to ask. By its own admission, Harvard turns down
hundreds -- maybe even thousands -- of students each year _who are qualified
to attend Harvard_. There simply isn't enough space, and at the highest tiers,
it becomes a crapshoot. Kid A and Kid B could be equally qualified, and both
could have made it through the gauntlet and down to the wire, but Kid B wins
out in the end through a process verging on picking straws. For the rest of
his life, Kid B is "Harvard-educated," while Kid A is deemed by many folks in
society to be Kid B's intellectual inferior.

But what if Harvard had enough capacity to admit everyone who met its
admissions standards? It's a question worth asking. Would Harvard cease to be
"Harvard" if that were the case? Thiel's point is that it would -- which is
indicative of a problem with our valuation of Harvard.

Be that as it may, your overall point is sound. Harvard may have some mystique
baked into its valuation, but most of us still hold the valuation -- mystique
and all -- in high esteem. We accept it at face value. So long as we continue
to do so, the bubble stays afloat.

In order to test Thiel's thesis, we'd have to go a step further and ask
ourselves: what would, in theory, cause the bubble to pop? What would it take?
Given that this bubble (for lack of a better word) has been propped up for
hundreds of years, and is still going strong, what straw would break the
camel's back?

I'd argue that it's Stanford. Or, rather, everything the proverbial Stanford
represents: Silicon Valley, something approaching new-money meritocracy, and
so forth. If enough Stanfords emerge across the world, suddenly the time-
honored value of the Harvard degree seems less shiny than it once was.

[Interestingly enough, Harvard does a pretty darned good job at being a
Stanford, too. But, for the set of Harvard attendees who are there to collect
the credential and not to start up a company, the value of that credential-
qua-credential would decrease in a bubble-deflating scenario].

~~~
aothman
"Proverbial Stanford" coincides a great deal with "Proverbial Harvard" - both
are wealthy private schools that admit the very best students and have
society's bias towards the well-to-do sons of well-to-do fathers. If you're
looking for a school to contrast with Harvard, Stanford is a poor choice.

Furthermore, _actual_ Stanford isn't doing any damage to _actual_ Harvard. The
data I've found suggest that 70+ or 80+% of undergrads admitted to both
Harvard and Stanford pick Harvard.

Sources: [http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-
adm...](http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit-
comparison.php?compare=Harvard+University&with=Stanford)

[http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-
princeton-...](http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton-
and-stanford.html)

~~~
jonnathanson
All analogies are imperfect, but I chose Stanford for the specific reason that
it's been at the forefront of perhaps the greatest semi-meritocratic* drive in
modern American history: the high-tech industry. I very much meant the
"proverbial" Stanford when I used Stanford in this example. I meant the
Stanford of the movement Stanford has helped to shepherd -- the Stanford that
exists in popular consciousness, regardless of how removed that perception may
be from the reality of the school.

*I must use the "semi-" qualifier here because, as we all seem to agree, there's no such thing as a true meritocracy. The wealthy have advantages throughout life that maximize the chances of generating a meritorious CV.

------
jonbischke
Posted this as a TechCrunch comment but wanted to cross-post here:

The challenge higher education is going to face is that the signaling
mechanism that higher education provide (i.e. you were good enough to get into
Harvard so you're good enough to work for Goldman Sachs) is going to become
de-coupled from the institution's ability to impart knowledge on people. A few
decades ago, most of what you needed to learn to be productive in society was
best learned at a university. Today, most of the what you need to learn to be
productive in society is best learned on your own, online, for free. There are
exceptions but 99% of human knowledge is no longer locked up within a
university.

Contrast that with the cost of higher education.To go to UCLA as an out-of-
state student it now costs $50K/year
(<http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm>). And that's a _public_
school. And it's rising 8% a year. So the cost of learning has plummeted to
almost nothing and yet 18-22 year old kids are taking out six figure loans to
"learn". This makes no sense and feels very unsustainable.

And here's what I think will change the game: alternative signaling and
credentialing mechanisms. When universities no longer have a monopoly (or
near-monopoly) on signaling/credentialing we'll witness a sea change. I'd
offer that this is already starting to happen in certain parts of industry.
Would you rather hire an engineer with a lot of GitHub followers, a great
reputation on Stack Overflow and/or someone who is a Y Combinator alum or
would you rather higher a Stanford or MIT grad? It's a bit of a toss-up for
many people to answer that and given that the comparison is Stanford/MIT and
not the 4,000 "lesser" schools, that says something.

This change won't happen overnight but Thiel is on the money here. Higher ed
is a $500 billion industry in the U.S. alone and I think its value proposition
has never been more questionable than it is today.

~~~
_delirium
_A few decades ago, most of what you needed to learn to be productive in
society was best learned at a university. Today, most of the what you need to
learn to be productive in society is best learned on your own, online, for
free. There are exceptions but 99% of human knowledge is no longer locked up
within a university._

This knowledge hasn't been locked up for _decades_ , though. It's been
possible since at least the mid-20th-century to self-teach yourself the
standard material in any major field, at least at an undergraduate level, by
going to a library and reading, from the introductory textbooks up through the
advanced ones. There are some things that might be hard to replicate (e.g.
getting hands-on chemistry lab experience), but you could certainly self-teach
the equivalent of a 4-year program in mathematics or history or theoretical
physics.

A few people even did. In mathematics it's not that uncommon to find self-
taught people, though it still isn't the norm. But overall not many people do
it. Why will people do so now? Just because the material can be accessed
without going to a library? Given that it takes some effort to work your way
through a 4-year physics program, was the effort of going to the library to
pick up Griffiths/Feynman/Landau really the main bottleneck?

I can definitely buy some change on the margins and in poorer countries
(people who had no access to a library), but I'm confused why the internet
will mean that people who for decades have not been teaching themselves
physics, despite the books being available, will now do so.

~~~
6ren
Yes, Christensen in _The Innovator's Solution_ talks about people buying
products to get the jobs done that they want to do - we can consider a library
and the internet as products, to get the job done of education.

He notes (p.94) that many companies tried to use the Internet to reshape the
textbook industry, by supplying more content. But, he says, the job most
students are really trying to get done "is pass their courses without having
to read the textbook at all". These companies were trying to help students do
something that they were trying _not_ to do. He imagines a hypothetical
"cram.com" would be more successful.

Most people (not all) find self-study extraordinarily hard - how many things
have you, dear reader, set out to study but not completed? I think the only
ones I have managed are when I'm using a textbook to help me achieve something
specific - write some code, build a business, solve some problem. I wonder, is
this really "study" or just "use of references"? e.g. Looking a word up in a
dictionary is not really "study", to comprehensively master a topic.

It would be incredibly disruptive if someone found a way to make study -
giving useful skills - enjoyable and easy. Gameplay seems the most favourable.
I don't just mean things like SO-style badges, but like physical sports
(games) teach motor-skills, eye-hand coordination, teamplay and strategy. It's
like the "purpose" of play is learning. Note that even animals play (e.g. dogs
and wolves have a "play bow", that indicates what follows in not a genuine
attack).

------
wyclif
Here's what Piaw Na, a Xoogler, said about this piece-- it's worth quoting:

"When the Thiel Foundation came to a local startup incubator to pitch, it came
under heavy fire. For one, a lot of their recruiting heavily targeted existing
Ivy League/MIT/Caltech students. These were students who were going to do
great regardless of whether or not they pursued traditional college paths.

In other words, if this is an attack on the traditional college path, Thiel's
definitely sided with their filtering mechanisms.

One guy who was present said the following: "You guys denied admission to the
program from the one candidate who was actually making money as an
entrepreneur!"

------
reader5000
Before I went to college, higher education received the reverence of some sort
of religious institution. Not only would attending college/grad school
guarantee easy middle class living, it was the Path. Universities were these
Higher Grounds, noble and humble institutions pursuing the best of the human
spirit.

Then they sack you with six figures of non-dischargeable debt and you're back
living with your parents sending out resumes.

I don't think a "bubble" is the appropriate term, I think "exploitation" is
better. The value that universities provide (either as learning environments
or signalling systems) is nowhere near commensurate with their costs to young
people. Young people have no idea though: they don't know the performance of
the university in terms of enhancing graduates' incomes nor what a reasonable
level of education debt is. And universities are completely negligent (and in
some cases outright deceptive) in providing this info to incoming students.

Education debt WILL be made dischargeable in bankruptcy again, there is simply
too much pressure (edu debt is larger than credit card debt). When it does,
you can expect tuition rates to plummet, back in line to their real net
present values. In my opinion this could not happen soon enough.

The university comes from an era that never really existed of large, stable
corporations providing steady employment to "educated" worker bees. The
university was the 0-cost-to-employer filtering system to ensure Big Co
highers the best people. That model simply doesnt make sense anymore.

~~~
mdemare
>Education debt WILL be made dischargeable in bankruptcy again, there is
simply too much pressure.

I'm not sure if that's possible - isn't essentially every graduate bankrupt?
Couldn't every student get rid of their debts then?

------
microarchitect
I agree with Thiel's essential point. We need to take a step back and ask
ourselves what benefit is being derived from sending all these kids to
college. The kids also need to look carefully at the risk vs cost vs benefit
of taking on debt in return for potentially higher future earnings.

Having said that, his statement "If Harvard were really the best education, if
it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can
attend" misses the point entirely. Sure, Harvard probably has above average
education. However, the reason it's sought after is because of the perception
that all your peers at Harvard will be extremely smart talented individuals.
As a society, we're hoping that that by putting all these really smart kids
together in the "Harvard environment", they'll go on create things that they
wouldn't have been able to on their own.

The point I'm trying to make is that the exclusivity of Harvard isn't "an
excuse to do something mean", but rather an effort to create conditions where
our smartest youngsters can get together and really change the world. I do, of
course, agree that there are many other ways of achieving this goal than just
college education.

~~~
gammarator
Sharing the "Harvard environment" with talented peers can be pleasant,
horizon-expanding, and occasionally inspirational. In my experience, though,
it doesn't often inspire young people to change the world. Instead, it
introduces them to lucrative career options (e.g., investment banking)
available mainly to Ivy League grads. Given the massive salary differential
compared to virtually anything else one could choose, most go that route.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Instead, it introduces them to lucrative career options (e.g., investment
banking) available mainly to Ivy League grads. Given the massive salary
differential compared to virtually anything else one could choose, most go
that route._

Entry-level investment banking compensation is pretty low on an hourly basis--
definitely lower than entry-level technology. IBD is about the only six-figure
job available out of college, but it's awful when you consider the nature of
the work and most people leave the industry within a year, not capitalizing at
all on the "exit options"

~~~
gammarator
Agreed that the work is not nearly as appealing as an outsider imagines. My
point is merely that when I graduated (caveat: ~6 years ago, pre-collapse), a
majority (literally) of graduates were going into banking or high-profile
consultancies. There is no way all those folks came to Harvard with the goal
to join The System four years later, so the net effect of their education was
to redirect their ambitions into existing power structures.

------
hinathan
Money quote from this piece feels relevant: "Once you enable students to
borrow $36,000 a year, then magically the costs of a year in college (or for-
profit school offering worthless "skills" that do no more for the hapless
student than a high school diploma) rise to $36,000"

[http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/consumer-devolution-
tw...](http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/consumer-devolution-two4-11.html)

------
WA
I think Thiel is right - sort of. At least, if you consider the large amount
of money spend on a college degree in the US. Let me compare this to Germany.
In Germany, universities and therefore higher education is free. You just
enroll, take classes, pay your rent and after a couple of years, you are done
and usually have a degree that is very competitive around the world.

But every student knows that there are areas that lead to high-paying jobs
such as engineering, while in other areas such as history, communications,
philosophy, languages, you will have trouble finding a job, not even speaking
of a high-paying job. Still, people are usually more or less aware of the fact
that they might end up having an average-income job.

In the US, higher education is a financial investment where people expect a
financial return. In Germany, higher education is mostly an investment of time
and people are much more aware of the possible outcomes. We don't have a
bubble here.

~~~
barry-cotter
In Germany, the number of Abiturients, those who go to college prep schools
has been going up for decades. They have also relatively recently opened pure
universities up to certain relatively narrow classes of non-Abiturients.

Given that the number of people with college degrees has been increasing
steadily by age group in Germany, and that _someone_ is paying for it, i.e.
the state, i.e. the taxpayer, I don't see that "bubble" is an inappropriate
word.

Germany probably has less of a higher education bubble than any other Western
country though, because they have the best apprenticeship and vocational
training system in the world. I believe this is only stable because Germany is
enormously class and status conscious, and as a result has early streaming. I
don't doubt that some potential is wasted, but probably the fact that
Hauptschüler are not hindering the eductaion of Realschüler and Gymnasien
would justify the system by itself.

~~~
kayoone
In Germany you dont even need to go to college to get a good education in your
field. They have a system where Companies train new people from school (they
have to take tests and stuff to get in) for the job. For 3 years you work in
the company, go to school and get paid around 600 EUR a month. After
successfully completing that you have a degree that enables you to work as a
Software Developer or Media Designer for example.

------
gatsby
For anyone interested in learning more about the education bubble, there is a
good article in this month's Fortune magazine about the creation of a new for-
profit K-12 school in NYC:

[http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/06/chris-
whitt...](http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/06/chris-whittles-
plan-to-make-a-world-class-private-school/)

The article highlights some really interesting and shocking facts about
private K-12 education (i.e. Harvard's 2010 acceptance rate was 6.9%, while
acceptance to NYC's top private schools combined was 5.0%; Harvard's 2010-11
tuition was $34,976 and Horace Mann's tuition was $35,670).

[http://fortunefeatures.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/avenues_s...](http://fortunefeatures.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/avenues_school_numbers.jpg)

------
r00fus
A lot of this higher education bubble has to do with unnecessary costs of
higher education, like, say textbooks: <http://hubpages.com/hub/College-Text-
Books-Rent-or-Buy>

What will disrupt higher education in entirety is a properly done asynchronous
class-schedule structure that allows students to take the time they need to
finish the course. Coupled with some or full location independence and
mandatory collaboration, it could be drastically more economical.

~~~
jonbischke
I don't have any evidence to back this up but my sense is that the cost of
textbooks is actually _falling_ , not rising. Companies like Chegg and
Bookrenter have made it cheaper for students and digital textbooks will likely
help to accelerate this trend. The major increase in costs have been due to
tuition and that shows no signs of abating.

------
jdavid
providing access to everyone for something by nature devalues it. as we try to
democratize and socialize the world we try to give everything away.

college is just another victim of this. no one wants to tell a parent that
their new born child is ugly and no one wants to live in a world where we
can't all hope to be anything.

the housing bubble was the result of parents telling their kids to buy homes,
because that's the american dream.

if education is a bubble, if housing is a bubble, then the american dream
might just be a bubble too.

maybe it's time we invent a new dream.

a long while a go we dreamed of working less. i feel like in a creative
economy, one where the generation of creative ideas is of principal, maybe we
need more time to be creative and to share.

i think largely as a whole we are at peak capitalism. capitalism seems to best
fit when resources are expansive. i feel like in the next 20 years resources
will be less scarce than in the previous 20, and that is a strong signal that
we no longer need to focus on exploration and expansion as much as we do
living within our means.

~~~
entangld
I disagree with this "providing access to everyone for something by nature
devalues it"

It's not just that everyone has access. It's also that bubbles create huge
numbers of over-valued objects. If these for-profit colleges were cranking out
well-trained software engineers we'd see a rise in overall real value (there'd
be more technical co-founders available). Instead they're charging students
25k for online classes in degrees that society has no demand for. The same way
pyramid schemes sell you junk to sell to your friends. You end up with a bunch
of junk you can't sell. The degrees provide little or no real value to the
workforce, and they're not even a filter anymore. That's what's really wrong
with them.

------
aksbhat
I find the discussion here as well as the article myopic in the scope.
Programming/Web Startups are just a small part of the world. You still need
Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers and Scientists. Sure one can question the utility
of spending four years to get a degree in Liberal Arts, but most other
subjects require close supervision that one receives in a college education.

------
dpatru
The bubble in education is not at the Harvard and Stanford level. Membership
in that club is probably worth the cost. The bubble is in the lower-ranked
schools that cost almost as much but don't deliver the exclusivity of Harvard.
The people who will be hurt the most when the bubble pops are those people who
overpaid for the knowledge they learned in college: People who attended
average state schools who have a $600/month education loan payment for 30
years who have to compete for jobs with people learned the same thing for $600
in total.

Right now, there is no company that can give you for $600 the same education
that a state school provides for $100,000. But such companies are coming. Khan
Academy already is as good as any school in helping people learn. All that's
missing is certification: comprehensive exams given in secure environments
like normal standardized tests (SAT, ACT, LSAT, GMAT, ...) Compared to
teaching, certification is easy.

The real big bubble in education is at the lower levels, at the elementary,
middle, and high school level where schools are even more fungible than at the
college level. Kids don't attend a middle school for the prestige. They go to
learn. The bubble for the teacher unions will pop when states begin to ask why
the state should pay union-level salaries for teachers to lecture when
students actually do better with just a laptop and an internet connection.

------
acconrad
This may already be covered (with 88 comments), but I fear this article will
go on deaf ears, not just to education, but to general readers of TC
(investors, et al). In the same way that companies use higher education as an
over-valued indicator of capability, so do investors use incubators, and
suffer from the well-known "Group Think" mentality. The important difference
is that you have to pay for higher education, whereas with an incubator you
get paid. The other nice part is that you can re-apply to an incubator as many
times as you want, and there's no social norm about the age you have to
attend, whereas with colleges it's a 1-chance opportunity when you're 18, so
if you don't get into Harvard you just don't get in (yes, you can transfer,
but it's highly discouraged, and mainly in relation to the money involved).

I believe my only gripe with the article is Thiel says you should not judge
Harvard-caliber students if they went to Harvard or not, because we just don't
have enough Harvard affiliates. But that's very hypocritical thinking for a
venture capitalist, whose community resonates the same sentiment of judging
YC-caliber companies when there aren't enough YC-affiliates (cause if that was
the case, TechStars and other funds would hold the same esteem).

------
jmm
I think there are different facets to the bubble that need to be separated out
to talk coherently about its implications...

You can look at the bubble from the vantage point of the schools that are
competing to keep up with the spending of the ivys and have overextended
themselves:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aoglHAxZffTI)

And you can also look at it from the perspective of the students that are
emerging from mid or low tier institutions with a hefty chunk of debt relative
to their likely earning potential.

Peter's (or Sarah's) focus on the Harvard kids seems to be the least
compelling part of a potential education bubble. These are smart kids who
either leave school with no debt in the case that they are poor to lower
middle class, and with parental support (of the monetary kind) if they're on
the other side of the wealth spectrum. So maybe they're "wasting" four years
where they could be creating a business, but they're not in dire straights
upon graduation or necessarily compelled to sell their souls. Check out
Harvard's financial aid policies:
[http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/hfai...](http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/hfai/index.html)

I do think there needs to be some different paths put before kids in general
as they contemplate "college as the only option" but I don't think Thiel is
quite right to target the ivy kids as they have the least reason to fear an
education bubble bursting -- because of the lasting [perceived] quality of
their degree, their lack of debt in a lot of cases, their campus-born
connections to smart and wealthy classmates and alums, and their smarts.

------
random42
Is Peter Thiel qualified to opine on Education? (This is not a snark, but I am
genuinely curious to know how to process his opinion.)

~~~
freshfunk
Yes, because he "predicted" the dot-com bubble and "predicted" the housing
bubble. He's also a super smart dude who created PayPal, is extremely rich and
successful.

Yes, I'm being snarky. I'm open to his opinion but I also missing where he's
qualified to make a more informed opinion.

------
mousa
Thank you bubbles for allowing people to either have work or study. There's
all this bubble talk, but when it comes down to it, if everyone really was
just doing useful non-bubble stuff most of us in the first world wouldn't have
anything to do. Our economists aren't ready for that.

------
juiceandjuice
People in the valley have this weird notion that what is happening in the
valley is happening everywhere. It's not. Most people go to mediocre state
schools with a little bit of debt when they graduate, and then live in that
area for the rest of their life. Most people don't go to Stanford, Harvard,
Yale or Princeton and rack up $80k+ in student loans.

The real bubble is groupthink.

------
dougabug
Brilliant and thought provoking, heretical words. Exclusionary access,
prohibitive cost, insular culture, overgrown complexity concealing fundamental
ideas...

“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."

------
rkischuk
Makes sense. Same symptoms as the housing bubble.

Housing bubble - people have a right to own a home, regardless of financial
merit. Education bubble - people have a right to a college education,
regardless of academic or financial merit.

Housing bubble - massive federal infusion of cash that drove short-term costs
artificially low, spiking sales prices while putting people in large, long-
term debt for something they don't necessarily need (ownership - people do
need housing). Education bubble - massive federal infusion of cash that drives
short-term costs of education artificially low (student loans), while putting
people in large, long-term debt for something they don't necessarily need.

Common theme - long term infusion of federal cash into markets leads to
profiteering at the expense of the average American citizen. (What should we
expect for health care?) In particular, the artificial reduction of interest
rates allows sellers to charge higher prices for the same services. The
services provider collects more money. The purchaser pays the same (or
potentially more if their interest rate is not fixed).

Also, and economics, duh, artificially low costs lead to artificially high
demand, which without any sort of quality control, looks an awful lot like a
bubble.

------
hinathan
Makes a lot of sense — especially given the amount of remedial education a lot
of not-particularly-cheap colleges are having to undertake. Seems plausible
that a lot of the investment (both in terms of municipal and state subsidies,
as well as private debt) being made now won't bear a meaningful return for a
long time, if at all.

------
Goladus
This article is horrible.

It's a superficial story about Peter Thiel and Founders Fund framed as a
controversial argument about the value of higher education. It really doesn't
do anything more than pose the questions and include a few quotes from Peter
Thiel.

Techcrunch trolls the internet once again.

------
genbattle
In the end a University degree is just a piece of paper. What matters is the
quality of the knowledge and mentoring you receive from your lecturers and
from the university as a whole.

I think this situation is a result of the financial crash; Thiel is right,
people have fled to something they see as a safe investment to increase their
personal worth. People are going (back) to university so they have the
qualitifications they need to get a job that would have previously required
very little in the way of formal education. The market is flooded with
educated job-seekers, so people must now set themselves apart with something
else.

------
jacques_chester
Thought bubble: Companies use universities as a filtering mechanism, like
recruiters. But recruiters get paid and universities do not. Conclusion:
universities should get into the recruitment business.

------
intenex
Thiel's going to have a lot of success with this first batch - if I may say so
myself, being one of the finalists. It's remarkably generous of him to offer
100k without any equity exchange whatsoever - the terms are far better than
those offered by YComb and arguably quite equal in beneficial environment
acquired - particularly as it's for 2 years and not a quarter-year mini-stint.
We'll see what happens in two years ; )

------
cvander
He has a strong opinion and this will always generate a big debate. But what I
like the most, is that by talking of the education bubble and creating an
option for students (the 20 kids program with $100k), we're going to test his
theory soon. If that works, how about some of the top education programs
replicating his model?

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martinshen
I plan to write a blog post about this later but I'm starting to think that
the term "College Drop Out" has started to become more valuable than "College
Graduate." This may not be completely true right now but in 5 years when
today's 25 year olds are hiring, the term may possibly be more valuable.

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rgrieselhuber
Something that is hinted at the end of the article but not fully addressed:
the risk of creating a new elite (if elitism is the problem) is there just as
much in the new system (such as Thiel is) as it was the original institution.

~~~
dougabug
There will always be an elite. But society needs a humble, wiser elite, who
lead by example, talent, and perseverance; leaders who provide valuable
insight, rather than protect their advantage by raising walls. Ken Thompson is
the best kind of elite, an elite mind who gave us the foundational tools to
build a whole new industry.

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ericingram
I couldn't agree more.

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shareme
In a free competitive situation the government if it wanted to give value to
higher education while hobbling other competitive items would make higher
education at state schools somewhat free thus reducing the competitive edge of
for-profits while also reducing the debt load per student which spurs job
creation because more college graduates can afford to start businesses and
startups..

At least in the USA the main reason why college is not free is that the major
debate in congress occurred during the years after Vietnam Veterans returned
and US congress people had a cultural bias towards giving those returning from
Vietnam and those who did not fight in Vietnam a 'free college education' and
like all political laws very hard to over-turn through a renewed debate..

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tomjen3
Thiel is wrong - education is valuable, college very much so.

But an English degree is not higher education, it is a fiction we created for
those who want to go to college but can't hack it in the real world.

A STEM or a law degree will make you a lot of money.

~~~
daeken
> Thiel is wrong - education is valuable, college very much so.

Depending on your definition of "education", I agree with the first part of
your statement. The second part of your statement I wholeheartedly disagree
with. Education in general is a very valuable thing, but a classroom education
is not the only one, and college _can_ be valuable but is not necessarily so.
I'm a high-school dropout, yet I've never regretted it for a second -- I have
a good deal of education, but it comes from self-exploration and
experimentation and it's shown itself to be quite valuable so far. My case is
by no means the norm, but propping college up as the only path is pretty
silly.

~~~
tomjen3
Have you been to college?

If not, how do you know if you would have learned at lot there or nothing at
all.

I can't blame you for dropping out of high school, but please don't tell me
what college is or isn't if you have never gone to one.

~~~
todayiamme
I downvoted you because I felt that the tone of your comment is more
aggressive than a discussion should be. It's just mean.

It's like saying to martian geologist, have you been to mars? If not, how do
you know what rocks are there at all?

No, but that person has parsed data from probes and knows what s/he is talking
about.

It's like saying that while planning a moon mission for the first time. Have
you gone to the far side of the moon?

No, but we will.

\------

The thing you're advocating is dogma. This person has lived through a lot of
things and can offer a unique perspective based on his experiences and the
data in front of him.

So, why should you not listen to him?

