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PayPal Co-Founder Gives Out $100,000 To Not Go To College
Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel says the key to quicker business innovation is skipping college. His foundation is handing out $100,000 to 24 people under 20 to drop out of college for two years and start companies. From the press release: "As the first members of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, the Fellows will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship, and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow. During their two-year tenure, each Fellow will receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs and innovators. The project areas for this class of fellows include biotech, career development, economics and finance, education, energy, information technology, mobility, robotics, and space."
Has he gotten $2 million worth of publicity from this stunt yet?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
College stifling innovation? Is that the feeling here? There are schools that do encourage innovation and project type education. Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass. is one of them.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I wonder how many people with college degrees they will hire
That's forward thinking right there! Why beat the competition if you can pay them a pittance to fail outright early in life?
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
When I first saw this on Fark I got excited that he was going to give people money to do an apprenticeship or maybe start their own hands on company. No, he's paying people that he hopes will be the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. We need a whole lot more of the former and a whole lot less of the latter.
Seems like a gimmick, to me. You know, as opposed to an innovative idea.
For a guy who's claiming that college impedes innovation, Peter Thiel sure had a lot of it. He has a BA in Philosophy and a Juris Doctor from Stanford.
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100,000 dollars really isn't that much money.
But isn't there a chance this could be taken by people who might fall out of college due to bad grades anyway? So nothing of value is lost to the students.
Turn on Tune in Drop out
I would go back to college! I wish I had money to continue my education...
... and that's how china overtakes US in engineering.
perhaps some more seat time in a classroom would benefit whomever decided to have 24 members of something called 20 under 20....
The net present value of a college degree in the U.S. is greater than $100,000 plus the two years of tuition saved. However, if you were going to drop out anyway, it's a good deal. Or, if you can drop out for a minimum period of time, take the gamble, then go back, it might be a somewhat good deal.
This is just stupid. Yes, some people will do better starting a company instead of going to college (myself included), but that is not the rule, that is the exception.
The vast majority will do worst if they drop college to start a company. Heck, most will crash and burn starting a company even after college.
The numbers of factor determining "success without/instead of college" is staggering, and it is not about $100k (heck, I did it with a quarter of that).
morcego
I agree with him... while it doesn't work for everybody the best engineers I know are all self educated. Unlike a lot of the college educated ones they are very passionate about what they are doing and are more inclined to do more. Just my 2 cents...
Wow, start a business with only rudimentary knowledge out the gate means hiring competent underlings and becoming a useless tit in an even shorter period of time than normal.
*slow clap*
University/College is only an educational institute. It teaches you nothing that you can't learn yourself in your chosen field through self-study and research.
But if you do choose to attend later, after you gain some real-world experience, you have a much better capacity to understand and learn what it is you are being taught.
That has some real value.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I mean, some of these kids already have degrees. One of them I read attended classes at a university since he was 10. Or how about this one:
"Andrew Hsu started doing research in a pathology lab when he was 10. By the time he was 12, he had matriculated at the University of Washington. Soon after, he graduated with honors degrees in neurobiology, biochemistry, and chemistry. He was a 19-year-old 4th-year neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University when he left early this year to pursue his start-up, Airy Labs."
So this kid is under 20, but he already had 3 Bachelor's degrees and was a year from finishing a Ph.D. These kids are all smart and highly motivated, and it seems they're going to receive a significant amount of mentorship through this fellowship.
But just considering the failure rate of new startups, how would the Thiel Foundation look if 18/20 of their proteges are out of business in a year? My guess is the Foundation will be injecting money and talent into these ventures to avoid such a PR disaster.
I dropped out of University in 1996. I've never regretted anything in my life more than this. I'm happy with my life now, I have a good career and a family that I love, but I still think that dropping out was the biggest mistake I ever made. If I had the money, I'd go back, but it wouldn't be the same experience now.
For me, dropping out of college and starting my own business was the best decision I ever made; but I'd also been pining to be a business owner since I was a little kid and was mentally prepared to do the work that owning a business entailed.
Not everyone has the mindset to make it work, and for them they need to stay in school. If you've got a worker ant mentality, taking this guy's money will ruin you.
Don't go to "college". Come to our "fellowship" and take "classes" where we will mentor you and teach you things. That doesn't sound like a university at all...
The main difference is that they will probably dedicate more time an money for these students which will somehow prove it is better not to go to college... and they'd be right. It is probably better to get taken under the wing of a billionaire and get a free education than go to college.
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As we're talking about superstars here it's probably not going to affect them much either way. Self-starters generally know how to teach themselves anyway. Would would be better is if there was a tight bond between the grant and the school they're dropping out of and, perhaps, instead of dropping out for a period of time the University in question could give them credit or grant a different form of degree.
They hate competition. This is just a way to make sure that young companies start on a "buzz" but have no staying power...
Every time the college vs. no college debate comes up, examples of highly successful dropouts or people who didn't ever go to college are rolled out. The default assumption is that everyone is destined to be a successful entrepreneur. In his defense, he does mention further down in the article that not everyone is cut out for this.
Think about it this way -- to be a successful business owner, you can't just be smart or a hard worker. You have to have some sort of entrepreneurial spark that most people don't have. Every business owner that I've dealt with who is reasonably successful is also a type-A nutjob (mostly meant in a good way...) who works 130 hour weeks and never lets up. Sending the message that everyone can do this if they just try is wrong in my opinion. It produces a lot of small business failures and subsequent bankruptcies as people keep trying to make their business float despite obvious signs it'll never work. It also produces a lot of rhetoric that standard employees are a bunch of lazy people who have no drive and can't cut it in the "real world." Also, there's only so many small businesses that the economy can absorb -- if everyone is out running a frozen yogurt shop or pizza place or small-time startup company, larger companies don't have a workforce. Finally, the entrepreneur class plays the rugged individualist card a little too much IMO when pushing for things such as reduced regulations on business. Example: States who try to enforce sick time requirements on medium-sized small businesses are labeled socialist and hostile to business.
I will be the first to admit I'm not an entrepreneur. I have a good job doing systems engineering work for a large employer, I work hard, and my contribution is valued (after all, they keep paying me.) A smaller company could run rings around this one, but there would be a problem making that transition:
- I can't sell. Period.
- I'm not your typical "slimy used car salesman" personality that most small business owners tend to be
- I'm not willing to risk my livelihood or work insane hours for something that will probably fail. (Isn't it 90% of small businesses failing within a year still?) What would I fall back on?
For everyone else who isn't these things, the formal education route is the way to go. Just like your average unemployed factory worker would be ill-advised to cash out his retirement to go buy a Subway franchise, high school grads would be ill-advised to completely ignore the safer path to a decent living.
Honestly, he's not taking 24 random kids off the street. He's taking the cream of the crop. These kids probably would have done well in life, no matter where they went to school. Most of them are dropping out of elite schools anyway.
The mentorship connection that it develops will be huge for them. I'm jealous.
- www.awkwardengineer.com
Skipping it can be just fine if someone has the right idea and the capabilities to transform into a product. However, because it is a mean to an end, it can provide knowledge and inspiration to achieve the same goals. I see a very demagogic move here, that doesn't take into account the numbers. The very few that made it without college cannot be compared to the thousands that did it BECAUSE of college. Besides, I have seen many of the startups that Peter Thief is sponsoring, and while there are good ideas flowing, most of them work in a completely disoriented, uncoordinated way. These companies (I cannot name them) are run by people that do not possess the rigour and the focus that will ultimately lead them to fail. The same lack of rigour and focus were the same reason for them to drop out from college. Furthermore, while you can easily establish a software company with no training (in fact training may be going against you), I just don't see how you can do it in the bio- or nano-tech, with completely no exposure to basic concepts or science and technology.
So giving away 2 million dollars to the the top twenty applicants with a good idea is not really going to tell us anything. First, many of the innovations we see today were created using college resources. Bill Gates dropped out of harvard to do software, but it is alleged that he used campus resources to start. 100K is not going to get you campus resoureces. Dell sold computers out of his college dorm.
My thought is that people who want to drop out of college and go out and change the world do it. Some stay to maintain access to university resources. In any case the university will continue to be a basis of training for innovation. I have never had access to the equipment in the real worl that I had in University, and familiarity with that equipment has transferred to many other projects.
What would make me impressed is if there were 2 million dollars for high school students who start a tech firm prior to graduation. That woud accelerate innovation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It does make for an interesting experiment because going to college gives you a formal, theoretical background but doesn't actually prepare you for the workplace nor does it make you necessarily a better employee or manager. There are poor managers that have business/managerial degrees. I have a decent career in a field totally unrelated to what I studied. I was a Criminal Justice major that ended up in IT. I am entirely self-taught and I am running my own part-time business to supplement income. To be successful, you must be willing to have an attitude of "life-long learning." I remember my first IT job was a low level help desk job that basically involved taking tickets and routing them so I spent time on my own to learn and improve. I learned basic networking by building one in my house. I also made use of the internet to read up on networking technologies and TCP/IP. If we were slow, I asked questions of the engineers to learn more. Due to my own motivation to be a "life-long learner," I quickly got out of that low level help desk position and on to desktop support and beyond. I have seen many people come out of college with degrees in Information Technology and I can run circles around them. I would hope that Peter Thiel would also encourage learning.
This is a paid mentorship/apprenticeship. And that is a fine way to learn in many fields, provided the person is capable. It's like the blacksmith jobs of old. But give someone 2 years under a startup CEO, and they will undoubtedly be more prepared than someone with 2 years of college in starting a company.
Experience is one of the best teachers. Books are no replacement for the real world, with its successes, but more importantly, failures. This is why even medical doctors don't graduate without hands on experience.
Still, I don't like the idea. Rather, I think experience is part of a well rounded curriculum, not the entire curriculum.
I8-D
The deal here is that people are going to college for the wrong reasons. They believe that it will help them get a good job and help them make more money in the long run.
The problem here is that it's a lie. The chances of them making more money is good, but it's not that much more. It's certainly less then what it is going to cost to pay off student debt.
People that make a lot more money then non-university degrees are people that go to university for 6-8 years, not just the four to get a standard degree.
People coming out of college now are given worthless computer science educations. They are utterly clueless about how to deal with real world situations and real world computer systems. Large scale computer systems are not designed, they are dirty and thrown together by people with genius level intelligence and continuously developed by people with average intelligence. Lots of problems, lots of bugs, lots of bad design.
If you take a average computer science major and throw them into the situation they will unfailing just thrash about for 6 months to a year unlearning all the bullshit they were taught in school. This costs corporations a huge amount of money to train these college people and give them real educations that they need... which is on the job training.
On top of that they are arrogant and will refuse to understand what is going on since they are thinking they know better.
A person with a lot of drive and is willing to put a huge amount of time, effort, and risk into their carriers when they can afford too... (right after highschool) will have a huge advantage over people with a four year degree. University isn't a bad idea... it's just if your going there to get a good job after it then your deluding yourself.
Plus they are amazingly over priced.
For the utility of it and what it is worth in the market place: University 4 year degree should cost about 3000-7000 dollars, depending on what your doing. Books should be free and provided for by Universities on the web. If you take out loans that means you'll probably end up paying about 9k-15k for that degree, since the interest is going to be painful. If you work part time you can have it paid off the day you graduate.
That is how it SHOULD be.
Now the market is distorted and students are being lied to by the educational system. It's a joke.
Nowadays a university degree means a 70 thousand dollars worth of debt and a job at a coffee house making 10 dollars a hour. Or making 15 dollars a hour being some low level code janitor.
Why? Because that is all a college graduate is worth in the market place. A 4 year degree may get you past the idiots in human resource, but nobody working on real systems... and certainly not your boss, is going to give a flying fuck.
THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR DEGREE.
There are very literally managers that will NOT hire people if they have a lot of education. Because they can't tolerate their bullshit attitudes and have no time to train these people.
Source:
15 years of real world experience.
I agree with his points suggesting education is hinted at far too strongly, especially Universities. I abandoned my degree in the second year feeling that there is far less market for them (not just degree-dependant jobs, but jobs that a degree can help you with). And when you see the value of a degree declining when education is mainly a way to give you skills to work, to earn, to make money and keep capitalism rolling, it makes you think. To get a suave job nowadays you now benefit more from side projects, work experience and the things you do besides the degree. If everyone has a degree in computer science, you cant define yourself with it. So I say, good on him, but giving kids money to start businesses won't go far. It pushes ideas-for-profit over ideas-for-innovation...and many things these days aren't innovation, they're rebrands. Oh, and kids? Good luck getting around all the patents... *chuckles*
If failed, then I can always go back to college
I discovered the internet in the 80's, at university, and totally fell in love with the whole concept of special interest news groups, email, and using ftp to get freely available software. I thought it'd be an interesting idea to create a "BBS" (the only term I could think of to apply to it at the time), which would provide a number of dial-up lines to allow the general public to connect to it. I began doing some research to figure out what the cost of running such an operation would be, starting with 16 phone lines, and working my way up from there once the company started to make a profit. I also inquired with the university about out how much it would cost to lease a connection from them, situated relatively close to the campus, and calculated the cost of laying down the necessary cable, and the start up costs worked out to be in the many tens of thousands of dollars. I wanted the service to be affordable, and was hoping to charge 5c per minute, or preferably even less. I didn't expect the phone lines to be in use all the time, so I estimated how busy I expected the phone lines to be, based on an amount I figured was reasonable from my experience with multiuser chat BBS's, and calculated that near the start of the 2nd year of operation, while making enough money to cover all of its own ongoing costs the whole time, it would have made enough on top of that to completely pay for the start up costs, and at that point would be completely self-sustaining and could start to grow.
I approached someone I happened to personally know who worked in the loans department for a bank to give him an unofficial pitch for my idea. I wanted to approach it as a business loan, and that seemed reasonable to myself and the other fellow that I had recruited into helping me do the research.
He thought it was really innovative, but he thought that my estimates on usage were very high, since this sort of thing was wholly unproven, and said that I would probably not be able to get a loan for the amounts that I would have needed to start up.
*sigh*
If only...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Big deal.
I had a girlfriend that made more than that when she was 18. Brought home $900 a night on average. Worked as a drinks girl at the sands and had GIANT boobs. She had the brains to get over the stupid "they look at me like 'im an object" objection because she knows that men stare at a hot chick with giant boobs... So she cashed in on it.
Too bad she went crazy and went all religious on me....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
or does this just smack as another attack on Education. It seems everywhere I go I keep hearing how poor kids don't need college, books, classrooms, teachers. They just need to work. I'm reminded about how robber barons in the 1800s used to argue against the 40 hour work week, saying the working classes would just use it to drink (idle hands... devil's play thing).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These days, you don't go to college to get an education. You go to college to get a piece of paper that gets you a job.
In college, you actually end up teaching yourself all the actual knowledge stuff.
What going through the college education process actually teaches you, however, is how to successfully deal with tons and tons of total bullshit relentlessly thrown at you all at once, and how to be able to get through all of it.... well actually you end up teaching that to yourself too. But basically, in the end, getting a college degree proves that you've been able to navigate through all kinds of stuff and manage yourself as a resource to complete multiple simultaneous daunting tasks and unreasonable workloads, and have demonstrated that ability on a verifiable paper trail. ...and that's what the corporate world wants to know before they hand you a career-level position.
First session of our orientation course in our first year, our professor from industrial engineering (our dept) dept, who was flying to m.i.t. to deliver lessons and back from time to time, (one of the youngest professors in this country back then) had told us that we would only remember 4% of ALL that we were going to learn during the course of next 4 years of academic education. and ALL of that would only serve the purpose of giving us a 'formation'. a formation of scientific/engineering mind.
he was right. despite we were studying in a university that sent academicians to teach in a lot of respectable universities of the world, despite we were a university that was geared more towards practical (applied) education, (a few of my classmates are in top 4-5 people of some fortune 10 companies now), the next 4 years of education was really in that manner. after a while, you come to learn - this is the reality of an education system that has descended from scholastic roots, and there are few universities and colleges exempt from these around the world, and these are considered radical.
so in short, even our education system, even if it is conducted with a 'modern' approach, is, 96% inefficient. we load 96% crap into brains of people, only to give a formation that is worth 4%.
it is stunning that, up until this point, noone was able to bring a method that would give 100% formation without loading 96% crap.
but hey - education and textbooks are lucrative businesses. so, our youth has to endure 96% crap.
Much better kids get some basic education in high school, then directly go about doing what they want to do, and learning in the process. times have changed. we had to shell out $50-90 on a single textbook to get to what would be considered advanced information back then - now we have google, and unfathomable amount of information that it indexed, thanks to what crowds put on the web. and yeah, what you can get from web, can be as good as what is put into textbooks. (and at times, more advanced and deep than you would want in a coursebook).
it is time to reform.
Read radical news here
He already has 2 patents before he was accepted by Stanford, and has already opened more than 10 companies, and his current company already has significant backing. Peter Thiel's award is only given to people who don't need college.
It's not that College is worthless; it's that college isn't worth the cost anymore.
College costs have gotten so out of hand that it'll be very hard to make enough to warrant the education. Is a college education really worth $40K or more?
For many private colleges, $100k is about what it costs to go to school for 2 years (incl room/board).
That's precisely how most people see their degrees and why we need to get rid of the concept of most jobs needing a degree. Liberal educations used to be hardcore... closer to modern engineering majors in work loads than what we have today. 100 years ago, a liberally educated student could claim competence in classical languages, math, basic science, music, economics, rhetoric and writing. In other words, such a graduate actually was a good candidate for a serious career in government or the private sector because it took a "somebody" to make it through such a diverse and rigorous program. Today, they're a $50k+ second high school diploma (where a high school diploma back then was equivalent to a B.A. today).
As to this guy, he has a B.A. and a J.D. from an elite university. If anyone can actually comment on the wisdom of this more normal path (his choices in majors, if not university, is closer to what most Americans choose in college), it's him.
Does the world need 20 new pot dispensaries, record labels, and social media copycat companies? Why not just hire 20 people who didn't go to college for jobs that would otherwise require a college degree? Then he can tell us in 6 months how well that worked out for Paypal.
Lottery winner gives people money to quit their jobs and start playing the lottery instead.
It is rare for people to drop out of college and start a successful business. If students at least wait to get a degree, they will have something to fall back on in the likely event that their companies fail.
It would be better use of the money if they pay off student loans of the top students so that they can pursue entrepreneurship instead of relying on getting corporate jobs to pay back their loans.
I have an idea for a website, its like Twitter but we make you pay for it
Getting paid to drop out of college? These kids are going to need that $100,000 just to pay back the loans they've already taken, only now they'll have nothing to show for it. Now, if you're already about to fail out this is a great idea, but otherwise, I think it's really dumb. College is not just about learning, it's an experience in of itself, where we learn who we really are, what we really want to do in life, etc. Coming out of high school I thought I knew it all, I thought I could start my own company, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, blah blah blah. How wrong I was - I could not handle a company with the limited experience I had at that point in my life, and I ended up figuring out I really didn't want to be a doctor, but rather go into IT. And I'm much happier for it! Had I dropped out of college, and taken this guy's deal, I would've had no degree, and a failed company with a lot of debt. I'm not saying nobody can do it, there's many cases of those that did, but they are a vast minority - most people would fail miserably and then have no degree to fall back on, not to mention missing out on the whole college experience.
:-)
Only idiots would take this deal, and shame on this guy for offering it - unless his intent of course is to eliminate his future competition now
Please... go read about the people who got the 100k before assuming they're just your average 19-year-old:
http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26&Itemid=19
There're people who're already in PhD programs by the time they're 19, and then people who'd founded venture backed companies before they got accepted by Stanford. These guys are not your average 19-year-olds. They're given the 100k precisely because they don't need the education any more. And very probably also because they don't really need the money.
I've been in the IT industry for about 12 years without a degree and let me tell you. All the BS about college not being important for programmers is just that...BS! What I learned in the first 2 classes, Discrete Math and Computer Architecture, almost makes it worthwhile alone. Can you code without knowing how to solve recurrence relations or Djikstra's algorithm? Sure, but it's damned nice to have those additional tools in your kit. It's also handy to address a problem with a tested solution some math geek wrote a grad paper on 50 years ago rather than spending a month trying to figure it out yourself.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
..but if PayPal existed in the 80's, so would ISPs and your idea for dial up internet wouldnt seem to smart and innovative..
This is another example of how markets are usurping all facets of society. Though I’m sure there are logically valid (but not sound) arguments to be made for skipping college from a market perspective, higher education is about a lot more than technical or job training, or at least it should be. Higher education is about becoming a better-rounded human being, not about being an entrepreneur, tycoon, cog, or what have you.
I know that’s overbearing of me to say, and I don’t really mean to dictate why people should or shouldn’t seek a higher degree, but this kind of thing just smacks of a direct assault by the ‘market mentality’ on competing bastions of social structure. This is a good springboard into a much wider discussion about how we are becoming a market dominated society, but I don’t have the time (my market duties call).
There's one thing I've learned after having borrowed and spent nearly $100,000 to get an MBA; about 90% of new companies fail within 5 years. So, if he's spending $2 million to allow 20 semi-educated people to try to start new companies, maybe 2 will succeed. Still, it's an interesting experiment.
Maybe he just watched this video: College Conspiracy.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The established higher education system is a complete financial scam.
The amount of knowledge actually gained can EASILY be done through apprenticeships and self exploration that should start as soon as possible, after emotional and physical maturity has been gained. This can vary by person and by home. I should have gone directly into a tech apprenticeship at around sophomore/grade 10. Instead I wasted years and tens of thousands of dollars on an education that gave me nothing. 0. null. "". nothing.
Every single amount of experience I have gained is through self exploration and self discovery.
People go to college with 0 idea of what they want to do in life because they've never been given the opportunity to pursue their dreams or simply have never been exposed to anything other than what is approved by the local school board.
Stop giving these scam artists so much money.
Stop wasting years of your prime motivational and productivity time period with such nonsense.
BUILD SOMETHING, PRODUCE SOMETHING! /adults, home school your children at all costs.
As a venture capitalist, Peter Thiel benefits from a larger pool of potential innovators to work from. Even better if they're college-age whiz kids who will work for pizza and beer. He's very skilled and knowledgeable at identifying winners, but he's also operating under a huge capital blanket that allows him to spread his bets and mitigate his losses.
The other side of this equation is the kid who takes him up on the bet. For every one that's actually successful, there may be 10 or 100 grant recipients who fail, and hundreds of thousands of grant applicants who take up Thiel's challenge but don't end up qualifying for the grant anyway. So, this is ultimately a losing proposition for many, as is often the case.
It is really important that young people recognize that the handful of startups that succeed enormously, distorted by the myopic lens of the media, are vastly outnumbered by the carcasses of miserable failures, many of which were well-planned, well-executed, but simply not in the right place at the right time with the right connections. And here's the rub: The two most talented pools of business innovation fellows come out of Stanford and MIT... which not only teach the necessary skills to make successful ventures, but also put those students in an environment conducive to building the right networks of people with fresh ideas that they can get off the ground before anyone else. Notice I didn't say "get there first"... Many get there first, and then don't know what to do from there, and never get truly off the ground.
Consider on a smaller scale the movie review websites Cinemablend and Ain't It Cool News... There are seas of film websites that come and go, but these two were able to monetize successfully simply by virtue of being among the first to get there, and they both rely on a relatively endless supply of free labor. But even they are working constantly just to stay in place. I know a guy who runs a film website with huge traffic and he can barely pay himself, let alone his 50 tireless volunteers.
Apple was there early. Google was there early. Facebook wasn't there first but they were in the right place (both Harvard and Stanford) at the right time, and they made some key innovations that no other social networks had thought of (most people who want to find former classmates go to Facebook. It's funny what one single field of data can do... but Facebook thought of it, and implemented it well).
So it's really critical to have a backup plan because the fact is, the market is so saturated that statistically most of you will never be a Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, etc. It would be great to see it, but I wouldn't bank on it.
Peter Thiel is another story... because no matter how many of you lose, he still wins.
Some people actually started their 'company' while in college and then dropped out...
It's an individual thing. You have to be really driven to do something like this and $100,000 is not a whole lot when it comes to starting a business.
What he needs to consider is the 'maturity' factor. Most people in this age range are immature and that alone can lead to failure.
I guess he is oblivious to the fact that most businesses fail within the first year and for no-hardened teenagers, early twenties types; this can have devastating psychological consequences.
On the other hand, there are a few who will run with this and make it a success. But only a few...
Peter Thiel says the key to quicker business innovation is skipping college. His foundation is handing out $100,000 to 24 people under 20 to drop out of college for two years and start companies.
As usual, you get to pick two of them. Quicker and cheaper (less out-of-pocket cost for you) usually sacrifices quality.
Personally, I doubt this would work for anyone except for an entrepreneur; I certainly know I learned a lot in college and I don't think I'd take that trade, definitely not to start my own company - I'm not cut out for it. Whether or not I'll use all of what I learned in college, I still realize that more than anything else college is a place to prove yourself and show that you're able to learn. If you're able to learn, you're able to succeed, both in college and in the real world.
I've pretty much been doing what I wanted to do while in college and afterwards. Money was never the main goal - just doing interesting and cool technical stuff. And adequate money has appeared on the sidelines.
"key to quicker business innovation is skipping college"
I would agree with that.
From what I has seen by the time people are done with college they are far to tired and drained to have much enthusiasm and innovative juices to actually accomplish something neat. And that is not even mentioning that they will likely be swimming in debt.
College is for getting jobs, if you want to innovate and/or own your own business then I cannot see it helping.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A "stunt" has no practical benefits -- this has practical benefits - several, really.
One, it focuses discussion on the cost vs. benefits of college. As a nation, the United States does not make education a national mission. No, really - America DOES NOT care about education.
(Now, sadly, I must waste pixels by declaring I am an American.. otherwise some genius product of our education system would try to tell me "how bad I have it in Europe" without actually checking my profile to see if that assumption is true. Moving on..).
America currently believes that education is a state and local issue. Less progressive states believe that education is an INDIVIDUAL issue.. particularly when it comes to financing it. So if you live in a district with bad schools (for whatever reason) it is YOUR responsibility (or your parent(s)) to simply move to more affluent neighborhood where the public schools or better.
Cities and towns have tried to solve local educational inequities by abolishing neighborhood schools, aggregating students into larger schools. This just shifts the inequities of funding from the neighborhood to the city level, without solving the inequities and lack of national education commitment. Even worse, when you aggregate an entire city into a couple of schools, then basically assign the student's curriculum by AGE (not readiness or skill), you suffocate the ability of the system to perform. Worse still, you detach students from their community leading to behavioral and even security issues. Parents start blaming nameless and faceless teachers they only see once and never again (where as in a small community, it's not uncommon for 2 generations of a family to have been taught by the same teacher, and it is all local).
If you look at a place like MIT or Caltech, the two largest demographics are wealthy kids, followed by foreign residents whose education is largely paid for by their own governments (who lack the local equivalent education, but still recognize the benefits of investing in education even if it is expensive and must be done overseas in America).
My point is this: college is a resource allocated based on pre-existing wealth or long lines of high-interest credit. College is valuable, but no longer can middle class America refinance their home or cash out the savings. There are plenty of jobs which are RESERVED for college grads, but to the extent those fields ONLY consider college graduates they will suffer having selected a paycheck-collector instead of an innovator. (I do recognize the benefit to HR in "filtering" their inbox by only considering college grads, but it does not end there... nowadays in the US the HR folks will filter out job applicants who are not currently working).
Even grouping students by grade is stupid. The larger the school you are in, the more barriers there are to taking advanced classes.
I dropped out of college to work in software. I made enough money, and worked at some great startup companies. I am content with that. I -do- wish I had finished, but college tuition has gone up 100%+ in the last 20 years. I could not justify the expense nor the reduced hours I could work for it. I might be contradicting myself here, but I am out of time to express things better.
One of the biggest benefits of college is personally networking with other smart people. If you can incubate an idea and a company and convince people to work long hard hours starting the next Facebook, more power to you. This just proves that not everyone has to finish to get the benefit of college.
Since free education ends at grade 12, America could do a lot better if it had a little more innovation in High School. I am in awe of what Deak Kayman's FIRST project accomplishes, and I wish our media gave it a little more attention (but the sponsors of our media prefer to sponsor "celebrity", not achievements).
Aha, now I understand why PayPal's customer service sucks!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Everyone knows that you don't have to be college educated to be a CEO or whatever. You just need to shmooze a lot. If you want to build anything, though, you need to hire people with college degrees.
Just cause some CEO feels he doesn't need to go to college, does not mean NO ONE needs to go to college. Only narcissistic fools believe that.
the old fashioned college system is a poor fit for lots of IT stuff. Now some of theory is good but it's overkill for non Programming IT work. And even for Programming some CS classes are to theory based and far from real programming work. Now some tech schools are more up to date then most big colleges in tech / os in the class room.
Now why does IT / networking work need so much math? So you want fail a smart IT guy just for funking Trig or art history?
On filler alot of it needs to go as big parts are useless in IT or just end being classes where you buy a essay just as you don't have time for 10 page paper on art history when you are setting up a mini network for a IT class.
But IT needs on the job apprenticeships with out the high cost of college. Not unpaid internships where at some you are just a copy boy or coffee boy. Some job make unpaid internships in to replacing a real job.
Doing real work in a apprenticeships is a lot better then working out of a book or cert test that is out of date or way off from the real work place.
a pedestrian grasp of social inequality recognizes the chances of his investment "paying off" are remote. the donation is the whimsy of a rich and powerful man who obviously read a few social science or crowdsourcing articles and became incensed to offset his tax burden through some form of experimental donation.
100,000 dollars is alot of money, certainly, but it isnt anywhere near enough to build and sustain an innovative technology company. startups typically work with around 1-2 million dollars. afterwards you'll need to take into account your level of social "power." How well are you connected with bankers, lawyers, and the technology industry as a whole?
Good people go to bed earlier.
You know the old saw about those who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. I can't speak to the situation today, because for a whole host of factors there seems to have been a general, across-the-board decline in standards and quality for undergraduate study. Suffice to say I did not complete my first round of college (I quit after 3 years), but went on to get a degree in another (somewhat related) discipline much later in life. Perhaps I was fortunate to encounter a few stellar teachers, and I mean world-class, in both situations. I owe them everything. Maybe you can teach yourself coding and/or business at home. Pity if that's all you'll ever learn....
For the few examples of college/university drop outs that are current billionaires, there are millions of examples of educated people in the US, with $70,000+ school loan debt, in a $35,000 salaried job (if they can even get that!) that they hate and in a house or apartment that they can barely afford. At the end of the day Ambition, Determination and Luck is more important in this educated/uneducated debate.
I think it is possible for many people to be successful in business. In my very humble opinion, the businesses that have a high rate of failure are trying to do something too innovative or hair-brained to be brought to market. Seven years ago, I learned that lesson the hard way to the tune of 20,000.00. Since the United States' economy is essentially one of goods and services, you can make a decent living by offering a service. It isn't necessary to have some innovation to be successful - just look at the number of cleaning services and computer repair services where the owner(s) don't strike it rich but they have a modicum of financial stability in their lives. The key in whatever you do is customer service and it often differentiates the fly-by-nights from the professional. I don't patronize a business if I don't get good customer service and I don't mind parting with my money if I really felt welcomed. I am employed full time and have recently started a part time business doing computer repair but I've made a name for myself by treating every customer with respect, and honesty, as if they were friends of mine. I don't make a killing and I could certainly charge more money but I don't. I get business by word of mouth and my customers have said, "Oh I have a friend - oops- I meant I know someone who will do reliable fair work." So on my days off, I usually have two or three people drop off computers and I get a repair assembly line going in the comfort of my own home. It is easy work and I get satisfaction from customers telling me that their one or two hundred dollars has been well spent.
So you'd prefer your doctor to be self-taught?
The vast majority will do worst
Would it be safe to say you didn't study verb conjugation in college?
Hey, I have a innovative idea. How about a website where whistle blowers can send information, this information can then be verified and published online. Want to help me out?
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. -Mark
I can understand the arguments, but this also sounds like a potential disaster. Encouraging people to drop out of uni and set up technical companies without having experience in these areas can end up badly.
For example, last week a postgrad visited the lab I work in looking to be taught a few techniques we use routinely. She has pretty much completed her PhD and is halfway through writing up, but she's doing a part time "knowledge transfer program" with a company that develops wastewater treatment techniques.
One of the things we got discussing was the difference between academia and industry. One of the most frustrating things for her was that none of the management or senior staff have any experience in science. Because they have absolutely no concept of how science works, of the kind of equipment needed and of the timescales involved, they hand her a water sample from their pilot plant and tell her to analyse it. What should she analyse it for, she asked. "Everything. Just analyse it". They don't understand that science doesn't have magical techniques that detect everything, they expect science staff to do CSI science and get a plethora of results in a few minutes.
So she goes off and starts applying some of the more standard assays. One of these is called BOD5: it examines the Biological Oxygen Demand of the sample and it takes 5 days to be completed, hence the name. The very next day, they start demanding results. She point out that it's called a BOD5 because it takes 5 days, but this isn't good enough for them: they want results and they want them now. Aren't you sciencey types capable of doing this, or have they hired the wrong person?
One of them asked her to do molecular work to figure out which bacteria are in the sample, something she'd never done before. Our resident molecular biologist pointed out that this requires a lot of equipment she doesn't have and that it would take months if not over a year to thoroughly optimise the techniques and do the required analysis, especially on a part-time basis.
"Will they pay for that and wait that long?"
"No. They'll hand me my P45 instead (i.e. fire her)."
"What about paying a commercial service to do it?"
"Nu-uh. They won't pay for that either."
I'm not saying companies need to be staffed exclusively by technical types, but you need to make sure that the entrepreneurs understand the other side of the company: experience from technical university degrees before setting up a business is one way to help that. You need to make sure that when these guys get their scholarships that the science staff understand the business pressures and that the managers realise that shows like CSI are an incredibly bad representation of science, and ensure that despite their lack of personal experience in technical subjects that they understand that developing cutting edge science and technology for commercial purposes isn't always as cheap, fast or easy as they'd like.
Getting a college degree, regardless of the major, requires discipline, persistence, and dedication. Now, it may be that there are many people out there who "didn't leran anything" from college. But if you managed to get a reasonable GPA (3.0 or higher), then you probably learned something, and you actually had to take the time to study for your classes. When I interview someone who has a good GPA, this is evidence (although not proof) to me that they can be given work to do, and they will understand it and get it done. Someone without a college degree lacks that evidence. They MAY have that kind of discipline, but I can't guess that very well from a short interview. (An alternative might be good references from past employers.)
Some claim that it is theoretically possible to do well in classes and then promptly forget everything you crammed. But that's disingenuous and discounts the effects of (a) subconscious learning, and (b) meta-learning. Even if you can't recall things you learned at will, you are often able to recall them in context. You forgot that you learned something. And meta-learning is more of a mind-shaping thing, where spending the time to learn some new subject matter forces you to think about things in an unfamiliar way. Even if you forget all the facts, it creates a broader view that makes you more adaptable. (This is why I prefer interviewees who had diverse minors.)
After 9 years in industry, I decided to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I found the advanced core courses in the grad program to be challenging, but they were not a fundamentally new way of thinking. On the other hand, there were the grad courses I took in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive engineering. Each of those fields has a culture quite different from what I am used to in CS, and taking those courses introduced me to very different perspectives on things. In order to do well in those courses (I did get all A's), I had to learn to think like them. The CS courses made me feel like I had learned some things I didn't know before. The courses in other disciplines made me feel like I had grown intellectually.
As a side note, those aforementioned areas seem to attract more women. Indeed, psychology, at least in grad school, is _dominated_ by women. Now, I'm happily married, so I had no interest in finding anyone to date. But for someone else, this might be something to look into. For me, what I enjoyed was encountering yet another perspective. For various reasons (cultural, genetic, hormonal, etc.), men and women seem to have different perspectives on many things. And in grad school, most of the students are very smart. So taking psych courses had me interacting with women who not only have a different perspective but also have the IQ and meta-cognitiion to be able to convey that perspective well to others. (Some of the differences are due to the different field, while some seemed to be clearly due to gender.) So, I enjoyed very much the things I could learn from them, especially those things that they understood better than the males in their field. On a similar note, I also enjoyed working with women in engineering. The diversity they bring includes not just different approaches to engineering, but also a "softer feel" they bring to the workplace, like how they decorate their offices and interact with others. I would probably feel less of a need to focus on this if there weren't so few women in computer science and engineering.
Besides the fact that he makes it sound like everybody makes it big ... and I thought NPR had a good analogy comparing it to all local bands going on to become rock stars (even considering the 80s/90s), it is the fact the fact he makes college all about ROI. That's the FUCKING problem! You don't always do things for financial reasons, but just to know life, to help others, and try to see the world a little better for what it really is.
Don't get me wrong, I support my family alone on my income and understand the power of money. Maybe it's growing up in a pedagogical family (Mom-public school special ed teach; Dad-engineer and part-time University professor), but for me one of the greatest things that can be purchased is an education. I wish that it could be free and equal to all, but that isn't going to happen. The fact is knowledge is the one thing you can possess that is difficult to remove (short of brain injury of some fashion). Knowledge is the flaming torch given from the serpent to the proles to keep their masters in check. Who watches the watchers? An educated public.
So, go on .. chase that lottery. Drink your Victory Gin. You're doing exactly what they want you to do.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
So the Thiel Fellowship is like a private school/club then? So like...someone 18 hangs with other 18-19 year old peeps and gets $100k?
Sounds like yet another reason why I was born too soon.
Ave Molech Setting
And look at me now! I'm a Sr. Software Architect and the author of dozens of hit games like Bard's Tale III. :)
Most 4-year degrees are not worth the price of admission. In our necessarily employment-focused world, most liberal arts degrees are totally worthless. Instead, completing a certain college with a certain GPA acts as an indicator of your potential worth to an employer. It's a $100,000 standardized test. The stuff you learned may help you on Jeopardy, but not in your job.
Even with focused disciplines like Computer Science, about half of the courses are useless for employment sake. Learning programming, design, teamwork, project planning, management, etc. are useful. Chemistry and calculus are not.
At some point people will realize this and stop paying $100k for college.
Thiel doesn't think college is worth the time/expense because he majored in philosophy. Of course philosophy degrees aren't worth anything, but biotech and engineering are not the sorts of things you pick up by reading a couple of books, and you can't start a biotech company or do any engineering R&D for a paltry $100K. If you're an art history major and you want to drop out to start an ad agency or become a life coach, then by all means, take the money and drop out; but I will bet all takers that none of these people will make a meaningful contribution to a technological field without first receiving a formal education. However, we may see one or more contraptions which claim to defy the laws of thermodynamics as that is the sort of thing that people without fundamental understanding of scientific principles tend to do.
Well, regardless of right or wrong, it will be interesting to see the outcome of the people who take him up on his offer...2 yrs out...10 yrs out...20 yrs out. It's a good social experiment.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
First thing that those not going to college will do when they start their companies is go out and hire people who went to college.
I'm 100% sure I read about this (well 99% sure it was this EXACT thing, with the 1% being someone else paying for kids to not go to school and start a business) RIGHT HERE on slashdot about a year or two ago. I want to call dupe, but the search function isn't really working too well for me right now...
I always love the pompous ass reply's such as this (typical slash loser stuff) that have grammatical errors in them. I hate interviewing with people like this.
Sounds to me like he's giving them a scholarship w/generous stipend to the Thiel College of Business...
Sure, he will give you $100,000. But then after three months he will take it all back and refuse to explain why. Eventually he will send you this email and declare the case closed.
Thank you for contacting PeterThiefIsYourPal. We apologize for the delay in responding to your service request.
After review, the decision has been made to keep your account locked. This decision cannot be appealed.
If you have any further questions, please go stick your head in a bucket of water.
The purpose of College is not to learn how to do coding, although most people in CS or Engineering will undoubtedly pick some up along the way. College is not about how to do stuff, but learning how stuff works, learning how to learn, and learning a little bit of a wide variety of fields (thus the need for the electives and first couple of years of prerequisites).
If you really just want a code monkey, you should get someone from a trade school. Someone with a college degree in Engineering doing coding is being underutilized. They should be creating specs, engineering a solution, perhaps building a working model and then handing it down to the junior techs to develop.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
When I read about this idea, for some reason, I just can't help imagining it being the brainchild of Cave Johnson...
"Those eggheads say we're falling behind in science because we don't have enough college graduates--well, I say we have too many college graduates! Everywhere you look, college graduates! It's getting so you can't pick them out of a crowd. What we need to do is take away those cushy scholarships we keep handing out--hell, we should be giving kids money not to go to college! Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea... Caroline, take a memo..."
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I can imagine pulling off a successful IT start-up without formal education, but a biotech company (which is among the fields listed)?
You won't even get (legally) access to microorganisms and chemicals without excellent professional standing ... and I really do not see how you could get sufficiently self-educated for anything in this field beyond running a microbrewery....
Solid post. I've been out of college working as a developer for about 12 years and have been thinking about going back to school. I miss the culture of learning, especially the smart women. :)
--
Just wait until your grant account is frozen by PayPal...
in a sense. Not an accredited one, they are not going to get a degree from it, but that's exactly what the "mentorship from the Foundationâ(TM)s network of tech entrepreneurs and innovators" will be.
The difference is that they will not have to go through the painful part of American college education that's called "general education requirements". Since these people will presumably be selected in some way, we can assume that they will already be reasonably well educated from high school. Such students, in many other countries, would not be taking any "general education" classes anyway, and would go straight to studying the subject they are interested in. It seems like that's exactly what's happening here, except the studying will be more hands on that in a regular college. In addition, it seems like they will actually be paid for it, rather than paying for it themselves.
AccountKiller
As a side note: The lowest grade you can achieve in Graduate School is a B. Getting an A at a graduate level in your chosen field is far easier than getting an A in your requirements where you have no experience to understand the scope and requirements necessary to achieve that aim. Example: When one takes Differential Equations or Modern Physics you don't walk in with a foundation already aware of what to expect. You do when you are in Graduate School.
first: it'll be a filtered process
only the best and brightest will be picked for the grant
so don't drop out til you're sure you've got the spot
second: each person 'earns' 50k a year (fixed) for two years
being the best and brightest of the batch, companies would normally have had to offer significanlty more than 50k/year to entice these people
not only would they have had to pay more than 50k in the first year, they would have to pay even more in the second year as they're no longer newbie's
third: since the person didn't finish college / university they have low qualifications
if the company they start goes belly up and they need to get a job, good luck arguing renumeration
throw them at the hr department and it's harder for them to argue they shoud earn 'more'
given the predicted personality types, they'll likely not be able to argue too well in their favour
and an excuse. "I dropped out of college to start a business and it failed." Then you can say you learned a lot from it in job interviews and go back to college while working another job. Hey I would do it if I were 20. I'd start a business in something I like. If it failed in 3 years you are still only 23 and could go to finish college by 25/26.
Only 'flamers' flame!
One of the points made, as if it is a positive, is that the intellectual property would not go to a university. The U.S is very a sad place these days.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
How bad is our banking system, political system and educational system? How bad? All these people are in charge have a college education and most have higher level degree. Our doctors kill more innocent people than crooks, gang-bangers or the military. All these doctors have a college education and higher level degree.
I'm not saying a college education is not good what I'm saying is people put such a high value on it to point where there is no real value. Why? because most people can't afford to go and its these people that make up middle class America. All the problems the USA is having right now are cause by people of higher education.
What is the solution? There is no real solution at least none walking around. Life is one big gamble so make the best of what you have. If you can afford a higher education then go for it. If not you'll have to work even harder but you people of higher learning should not look down on those who can't go or choose to do something a little creative with their brains. In failure we learn.
I don't have an higher education, nor a degree. I stop going to school to learn in the 4th grade. I never took math in high school. When I left school i could barley read. I joined the USMC, i got out. Now I make over $200k per year developing software solutions and I'm good at it.
I'll never be a Bill Gates. What I can say is this I invested $150 in books and CD's to learn a profession and then I work my butt off to reach the top. Now I try to help other people regardless of their education level. Thank you Peter Thiel for at least thinking outside the box.
Thank you very much.
100,000 dollars really isn't that much money.
Can I borrow 100,000 dollars?
College is not important!
Education is important.
All education != College
Education >= College
Education >= Experience
Education >= Certifications
Education >= self-study
For technology, College is barely a serviceable. It is always years behind and teaches theory more than practical application.
Who do you think will get paid more between the following two individuals:
John Johnson who went to four years of college and just finished a degree in Computer Science
or
Mark Markson who took a tech support job and has slowly moved to development and just finished obtaining his Microsoft Certified Developer Professional certification.
- Well, the first guy has a lot of student loans after four years. The second guy has none, and probably his company paid for his MCDP. :-)
- After the same four years, the college grad will finally get a job that probably starts at 48K a year. The MCDP has four years of real experience and now is certified and is going to make 80K a year.
- Sure both will have long careers, but one will always have more experience and always be step ahead. He probably hired the college guy.
As an individual holding a master degree, I found that university teaches you to be analytical, and either expressive or introverted. It does not teach you to really be innovative. How can you be innovative when you are deeply analytical. So, who succeeds in business when you look at the population at large? It is rarely the University grad.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I have never believed in college education today. The first two years of college is a complete waste of time because you are learning what you did in high school all over again. Colleges are institutions to prepare people for mediocrity not innovation. Most college professors do not have the intentions to prepare students for the real life. They are under the agenda to make you institutionalized to accept the norm and to take no risks. College education more often leave students deeply in debt that they have no choice but to take any jobs they can get to pay back student loans. Most people live in the delusions that a college diploma=a good job and a good life. That is utter lunacy. College education is a filtering system to drain your wealth and will power. The wealthier students have more money to go on to graduate schools while the poorer students are forced to take minimum wage jobs. The truth is that colleges are part of the tools to keep the social hierarchy intact. Most poor are perpetually barred from improving their social status because of poor life choices like taking out a loan to go to college. On the other hand, the apprenticeship system is better for preparing you for real life challenges. Opposite to learning things theoretically, you will be able to witness how things work in a real life scenario. I wish more opportunities like the one sponsored by Peter Thiel will emerge. Young people should have a better future not a worse one. Young people should not be told what to do but to do what has never been done before. The future of America depends on it!
Can I get 100,000 to start a studio?
Why under 20?
I'm sure there's plenty of 45yr olds that are out of a job and have some real spanking new ideas.
On reason it's harder for older folks if they have responsibilities (kids, house, car, family, etc...) where as 20yr olds can just forget everyone.
OK, by cracky....travel with me back in time...to 1972.
My first semester in college was at a state school....lived on-campus and had an 18 semester-hour load. Total tuition for the semester: $125. Room&board with unlimited cafeteria visits: $330. Don't remember the books...probably another $100.
Degree costs are going up. Does it make sense to acquire a $50K college degree for a job that pays $30K, then purchase a $20K car loan, then add the standard cost of living to that amount? There are people in their late 40s and early 50s who are still struggling with the undergrad student loans, never mind the almost-mandatory master's degree loan. Gen X, Gen Y, etc all have increasing levels of personal debt at younger ages. Our public debt exceeds GDP and that won't change for the next 30 to 50 years. How much debt can a nation stand before we collapse USSR style?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato