> it implies a bleak future where everyone must work harder just to stay in place
Not at all. It implies a future where people are more productive, produce more, and earn more. It's not just an implication, but fundemental economics.
> a tournament that bankrupts the losers and turns the winners into conformists
College is not a zero sum competition; everyone can be winners and get degrees. Also, most people complain that college encourages too much non-conformity. I've never heard, and it certainly wasn't my experience, that college creates conformists.
> Is higher education an investment? Everyone knows that college graduates earn more than those without degrees.
The focus on earnings is very narrow. Increasing your knowledge, your understanding of the world, your exposure to ideas, and especially your critical thinking and other cognitive and intellectual skills, helps you in every place in life where those things in apply. Not only as an employee, but as a citizen, a member of your community, a member of a family, as someone managing your own affairs, as an autodidact in your learning after college, and as someone seeking a fulfulling life.
> It implies a future where people are more productive, produce more, and earn more. It's not just an implication, but fundemental economics.
College degrees do not correlate with productivity. The earning power of degrees is almost entirely driven by proximity and access to higher-paying jobs. Productivity simply has nothing to do with it.
> College is not a zero sum competition; everyone can be winners and get degrees.
I believe Thiel is arguing that college experiences are becoming a cultural binary -- either you have a degree or you do not.
I read Thiel's commentary as: if you're a zero in that system, you lose out on future opportunity; and to become a one in that system, you need to conform (in the manner of social norms.)
> College degrees do not correlate with productivity. The earning power of degrees is almost entirely driven by proximity and access to higher-paying jobs. Productivity simply has nothing to do with it.
> it implies a bleak future where everyone must work harder just to stay in place
Not at all. It implies a future where people are more productive, produce more, and earn more. It's not just an implication, but fundemental economics.
> a tournament that bankrupts the losers and turns the winners into conformists
College is not a zero sum competition; everyone can be winners and get degrees. Also, most people complain that college encourages too much non-conformity. I've never heard, and it certainly wasn't my experience, that college creates conformists.
> Is higher education an investment? Everyone knows that college graduates earn more than those without degrees.
The focus on earnings is very narrow. Increasing your knowledge, your understanding of the world, your exposure to ideas, and especially your critical thinking and other cognitive and intellectual skills, helps you in every place in life where those things in apply. Not only as an employee, but as a citizen, a member of your community, a member of a family, as someone managing your own affairs, as an autodidact in your learning after college, and as someone seeking a fulfulling life.