PayPal Co-Founder Hands Out $100,000 Fellowships for Students to Drop Out of College and Start Businesses
May 26th, 2011Oh man. I can hear the squealing from the Student Loan Industrial Complex already.
Via: NPR:
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and one of the first investors in Facebook, is proposing a controversial path toward more rapid innovation. Today his Thiel Foundation announced that it was giving 24 people under 20 $100,000 fellowships to drop out of school for two years to start a their own companies.
Some of the recipients are leaving first-rate institutions like Harvard and Stanford to take the fellowship. In a press release, the foundation’s head, James O’Neill, said that in taking the fellowship they were “challenging the authority of the present and the familiar.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Thiel thinks ideas can develop in a start-up environment much faster than at a university. And the project is also intended to question the idea of higher education. Thiel told TechCrunch in April that the United Sates was in a higher education bubble.
“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he told Techcrunch. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
i don’t know how many times i have lamented the waste of time (and let’s not forget money) which was my college education. i mean, yeah, i learned a lot of really interesting things and met some brilliant people…neither of which have any relevance to my daily life since then.
the US severely lacks in educating pre-college students on their OPTIONS–it’s as if you either get a bachelor’s or work in a fry kitchen, with no door number three. or four. and so on.
if there had been even a single counselor/recruiter/regular person who had presented the possibilities of going to something like a trade school, or even getting *gasp* an apprenticeship with a real person, i have to wonder whether i would still be 30 and struggling over what to do with myself career-wise.
not that there is anything wrong with going to college when it is relevant and you have a clear reason for doing so. but in general, we are doing our youth a disservice by funneling them willy-nilly into 4-year degree factories.
i have made it my personal mission to spread the word about college alternatives to every kid who will listen to my crazy ranting.