What Happened After Peter Thiel Paid 271 Students to Drop Out of College? (msn.com) 114
Since 2010, billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has offered to pay about 20 students $100,000 to drop out of school each year "to start companies or nonprofits," reports the Wall Street Journal. His program has now backed 271 people, and this year the applicant pool "is bigger than ever."
So how's it going? Some big successes include Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, the blockchain network; Laura Deming, a key figure in venture investing in aging and longevity; Austin Russell, who runs self-driving technologies company Luminar Technologies; and Paul Gu, co-founder of consumer lending company Upstart...
Thiel and executives of the fellowship acknowledge they have learned painful lessons along the way. Some applicants pursued ambitious ideas that turned out to be unrealistic, for example. "Asteroid mining is great for press releases but maybe we should have pushed back early on," he says. Others were better at applying to be Thiel fellows than they were starting businesses, it turned out... They've also learned that lone geniuses with brilliant ideas aren't usually the kinds of people who can build organizations. "It's a team sport to get something going and build on it, you can't just be a mad genius, you have to have some social skills and emotional intelligence," says Michael Gibson, an early leader of the organization who is co-founder of a venture fund that invests primarily in those who don't have a college degree...
Thiel hasn't attempted to build a better education system, which program officials acknowledge has made it harder to develop talent in the program... Thiel fellows say they don't receive much more than funding from the program and have limited contact with Thiel, though access to a network of former Thiel fellows can be useful. "Meeting some of the other members inspires you to think bigger," says Boyan Slat, a 2016 Thiel fellow who is chief executive of The Ocean Cleanup, a Netherlands-based nonprofit developing technologies to remove plastic from oceans. Slat says he has spoken to Thiel "three or four times."
As a result, Thiel and other staffers have concluded they can't grow beyond the 20 or so young people chosen as fellows each year. "If you scale the program," Thiel says, "you will have a lot more people who aren't quite ready, you would then have to be super-confident you can develop them" — which Thiel and his colleagues say they aren't skilled at doing... About a quarter of the Thiel fellows eventually returned to college to finish their degrees, suggesting that even the dropouts see enduring value in higher education.
Thiel says they "got way more out of it by going back" after launching their businesses.
"The other 75% didn't need a college degree," he says.
So how's it going? Some big successes include Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, the blockchain network; Laura Deming, a key figure in venture investing in aging and longevity; Austin Russell, who runs self-driving technologies company Luminar Technologies; and Paul Gu, co-founder of consumer lending company Upstart...
Thiel and executives of the fellowship acknowledge they have learned painful lessons along the way. Some applicants pursued ambitious ideas that turned out to be unrealistic, for example. "Asteroid mining is great for press releases but maybe we should have pushed back early on," he says. Others were better at applying to be Thiel fellows than they were starting businesses, it turned out... They've also learned that lone geniuses with brilliant ideas aren't usually the kinds of people who can build organizations. "It's a team sport to get something going and build on it, you can't just be a mad genius, you have to have some social skills and emotional intelligence," says Michael Gibson, an early leader of the organization who is co-founder of a venture fund that invests primarily in those who don't have a college degree...
Thiel hasn't attempted to build a better education system, which program officials acknowledge has made it harder to develop talent in the program... Thiel fellows say they don't receive much more than funding from the program and have limited contact with Thiel, though access to a network of former Thiel fellows can be useful. "Meeting some of the other members inspires you to think bigger," says Boyan Slat, a 2016 Thiel fellow who is chief executive of The Ocean Cleanup, a Netherlands-based nonprofit developing technologies to remove plastic from oceans. Slat says he has spoken to Thiel "three or four times."
As a result, Thiel and other staffers have concluded they can't grow beyond the 20 or so young people chosen as fellows each year. "If you scale the program," Thiel says, "you will have a lot more people who aren't quite ready, you would then have to be super-confident you can develop them" — which Thiel and his colleagues say they aren't skilled at doing... About a quarter of the Thiel fellows eventually returned to college to finish their degrees, suggesting that even the dropouts see enduring value in higher education.
Thiel says they "got way more out of it by going back" after launching their businesses.
"The other 75% didn't need a college degree," he says.
Bizarre Experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, to get a successful start in business you have to be a fine young psychopath. If you're able to lie and swindle without caring about the consequences, all you need is a few bucks and you can build yourself an empire. It has nothing to do with ideas, experience, education, or even genius. Is that the point of this exercise? Because I have a hard time believing that, for example, an engineering student would benefit from participating in something like this.
Re:Bizarre Experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
"Is that the point of this exercise?" Yes, it is. It's a sociopath incubator. There is no value to rejecting learning, but there is value is preventing others from learning.
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Whether you like Thiel, or not, I think it's certainly respectable for him to be willing to put his own money where his mouth is. Most people are jus
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Someone said that companies don't hire people from e.g. Harward, because they provide the best education or because they think they learned good stuff there. They hire students from there, because they know how hard it is to get there (3% acceptance rate). So if you managed to get into a place where only a few can get, you must have some skills, so you are worthy to be hired.
Re:Bizarre Experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that college is the only path to learning, or that there is no learning to be had from attempting to do something. The summary even ends with the statement that some of the participants went back to college after the program. I doubt there was any actual analysis to support the claim that they "got more", but it would be interesting to study.
Whether you like Thiel, or not, I think it's certainly respectable for him to be willing to put his own money where his mouth is. Most people are just happy to spout off their own opinions without even researching their veracity. Here's someone who's actually putting them to the test.
In the end, it just shows what a lot of people have known just about forever.
College is not about the birthing place of billionaires, It isn't even the place where superior humans that are well employed post college are created, as so many people who took degrees that don't really qualify them for anything but taking their professor's jobs.
College is a place that serves as accumulation of knowledge and discussion in the arts (broadly speaking) and passing it on, and as a training ground for careers that require a lot of technology to be pursued. And the research needed for technological advancement. That's it. And that's a good thing.
Becoming a billionaire really has almost nothing to do with college. That's all a matter of the individual, and a whole lot of luck.
Becoming successful, the same thing. You don't teach drive, it's either there or it isn't. I know some people with degrees in fields that have a lot of opportunities who are employed as waitstaff. And while I don't know any personally, I'm pretty certain there are successful people who have opinion degrees.
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You speak about how things should be. You should visit a college these days. It isn't like you describe at all.
Dood, I have workedat University for the last 40 years. 30+ years in research, and ~ 10 in RF Intermodulation work.. Across a large swath of disciplines and groups.
So, um. educate me.
Re:Bizarre Experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
But then look at Thiels' company Palantir. The CEO was Thiel's friend at Stanford and that's the only reason he became CEO. He then went further and even got himself a Ph.D.
Karp earned a bachelor's degree from Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania) in 1989, a juris doctor (JD) degree from Stanford University in 1992, and a PhD degree in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002.
So, when Thiel's capital is really at stake in amounts significant to him, he goes with safe bets that know how to finish what they start and that he met in the Ivy League.
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"Is that the point of this exercise?" Yes, it is. It's a sociopath incubator. There is no value to rejecting learning, but there is value is preventing others from learning.
Rejecting college isn't "rejecting learning". You can get all the learning in the world from a library, including the biggest library of all, the Internet. With video cheaply available, almost all the knowledge you would want in the world is available on demand, at your fingertips. A lot of of from colleges themselves, who increasingly make their content free.
Rejecting college is rejecting debt, and credentialism. There's an important difference.
People have different skillz (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, to get a successful start in business you have to be a fine young psychopath. If you're able to lie and swindle without caring about the consequences, all you need is a few bucks and you can build yourself an empire. It has nothing to do with ideas, experience, education, or even genius. Is that the point of this exercise? Because I have a hard time believing that, for example, an engineering student would benefit from participating in something like this.
People who do well starting business are low in agreeableness [wikipedia.org]. This means that they tend to not be swayed by the opinions of other people, which is a prerequisite for success in the face of all the people who think it can't be done.
Psychopathy is a separate measure [wikipedia.org] and says that the person doesn't care about other people. Only about 5% of the population has an unusually high score in this trait, and they generally are not very successful. They tend to do well for a short time, but once people figure out that they aren't trustworthy they have to move to a different environment (where people don't know them) and start over.
Mad geniuses tend to be high in openness [wikipedia.org], which is another completely separate personality measure. High intelligence tends to correlate with openness, but you can be highly intelligent and not very creative - it's the openness that allows you to come up with ideas.
Making an actual product is the domain of conscientiousness [wikipedia.org] which is the actual running of the business, as opposed to the management. People high in conscientiousness are detail oriented and make sure everything works right.
And finally, business success is subject to The Matthew Effect [wikipedia.org], which is where your chances of success are proportional to the number of attempts you have made. About 80% (actual number, not made up) of first businesses fail, while only 40% of 2nd businesses fail, and the number goes down with each attempt. In effect, every time you make an attempt you are learning more about how to run a successful business.
(Consider: There's a similar effect with writing. Submitting your first novel you have to learn all about agents, publishers, submission rules, deadlines, and how to write popular prose. After 5 attempts all of the mechanism is familiar and you've had 5 attempts with feedback you can use to improve your writing. Stephen King notes that he had 140 rejections before he got his *first* article published. Not his first book, his first article.)
There's a fair bit of information about what it takes to create a successful business, just having "an idea" doesn't work by itself, you also need to be really lucky and have the proper skills available. So for the Peter Thiel thing, just throwing money at people with good ideas will probably not be very productive.
What would work much better is putting together a proper mix of people, one of which has a good idea, along with a mentor who can guide the group in matters of business to the point where it can continue on its own.
I note historically that several attemps of "throw money at inventors" thing has been tried in the past, with similar results. "Shark Tank" and "Project Green Light" [wikipedia.org] come to mind.
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Re:Bizarre Experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
A billionaire's hobby. Nothing much more than that. It teaches us nothing, goes nowhere, and will die with Thiel, or if he gets bored with it.
Well it's for the kind of people... (Score:2)
... who think that they have great ideas and that everybody who questions those ideas, for example by doing rough calculations so see if something is feasible, are just nay-sayers that should be ignored.
That's not really the kind of people who should do businesses. Spending money on things that are implausible is waste. Those people have proven to ignore rationality.
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Yes, but at least technology is fairly predictable, at least within timescales that are relevant for businesses.
The example you give, BTW is of the kind of "this business-model should be illegal... but it's not so we can exploit that loophole".
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Flying cars, jet packs and self sustained fusion are only 10 years away.
Very predictable.
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"Spending money on things that are implausible is waste."
Just how effective is advertising?
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Yes parts of the advertisement industry certainly are dubious, but then again, the business itself it plausible. If you get people to know about your product they are much more likely to buy it then if they don't know about it, plus there are many cases of an ad directly affecting sales in a measurable manner with profits increasing way more than that ad cost.
Of course it is questionable if companies like Coca Cola actually need to spend that much on advertising products everybody knows about.
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The idea with Coca Cola, or Pepsi, Ford, GM, and more continuing to advertise is to keep themselves in people's heads. So they don't switch to generic cola, that they don't switch to their competitors, etc...
Admittedly, this level of advertising is much more marginal gain, on much shakier assumptions, than informing people ignorant that your product exists in the first place.
It's interesting how Tesla managed to grow as much as it did on basically zero advertising budget, just basically press releases and
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It's interesting how Tesla managed to grow as much as it did on basically zero advertising budget, just basically press releases and the website.
People with too much money showing of their new expensive over-hyped bling toy, giving wanna-bes something more to desire.
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That's one way to say "early adopter", yes.
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It's interesting how Tesla managed to grow as much as it did on basically zero advertising budget, just basically press releases and the website.
Tesla was doing something that was really not easy to copy. On the flipside, if your idea for a business is launching yet another shitcoin, portable air conditioner, or juice dispenser, you'll need a lot of marketing to compensate for the fact that your product isn't exactly unique. One example that springs to mind was the old "Geek my Tree" Christmas lights. An as-seen-on-TV brands company ripped off the idea and had a cheaper version mass produced in China.
Re: Well it's for the kind of people... (Score:2)
There are lots of things that would be implausible at any point in history. When Intel was started the notion everyone would have a computer in the home was very implausible, when the iPhone launched people here were mocking others for wanting a $400 device in their pockets and that it was not a desktop.
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My AI girlfriend agrees with you.
Re: Well it's for the kind of people... (Score:2)
I'm just wondering why she has such a huge dick
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Because I paid for the XXL model.
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when the iPhone launched people here were mocking others for wanting a $400 device in their pockets and that it was not a desktop.
The original iPhone launched without 3G support, it had abysmal battery life, no third party apps, and was locked to AT&T. It bears very little resemblance functionality-wise to the devices we use today, unless you want to count the fact that it's a flat slab with a screen (and no, Apple wasn't first with that design either).
If the original iPhone had instead been launched by a startup, it would've very likely been relegated to the dustbin of history. Apple, however, had the resources (both financial
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when the iPhone launched people here were mocking others for wanting a $400 device in their pockets
I guess, but some people are ignorant. It's not like it was an especially unusual price, it wasn't even remotely the most expensive smartphone at launch (not that it even was a smartphone at launch). It wasn't implausible to anyone who had any knowledge at all about the market.
Re: Well it's for the kind of people... (Score:2)
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Yeah. It basically did a bunch of things which people were already doing, but a bit better. I had a ~2003 phone which could play AAC files. It was a gimmick because, well, it was AAC which wasn't well supported and it had so little and non expandable storage it could manage about one tape's worth in tape quality.
But clearly people wanted all that stuff and a $400 phone was not only not implausible, it was also not even new.
Prescription for American resurgence (Score:5, Insightful)
Take Peter Thiel and his fascist buddies, and lock them away in a deep, dark hole until the United States recovers its commitment to democratic government.
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Re:Prescription for American resurgence (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA worships people like Peter Thiel.
It's about the money, not the person. Without his wealth, the right wing would just hold him in the same contempt they do for every other LGBTQ+ American.
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Well said.
Re:Prescription for American resurgence (Score:4, Interesting)
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Democracy for all!!!*
*except for anyone who we disagree with....
Re:Prescription for American resurgence (Score:5, Insightful)
The real fix is to tax investment income. If you have enough money to live off your investment income then you pay less in tax than if you earn a paycheck.
This imbalance in tax between investment and tax on labor allows the wealthy to keep more of their money every year. Over time you end up with great inequality where the rich own everything. The idea that all of the money gets reinvested in the US and all boats rise is bullshit.
Our system created these assholes and to get rid of them we need to fix the system. And what I mean is to balance the system, not eliminate wealth or the ability to obtain wealth, but fair taxation. Our system puts the bulk of the tax on the highest paid labor income, the real producers pay the highest price while the board of directors gets a break.
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That's a really excellent suggestion.
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I presume you fail to see the irony in your screed.
I also note - it's not a democracy, it is a republic.
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Like China and Russia then.
Re:Prescription for American resurgence (Score:4, Insightful)
Says the guy who thinks the economy is tanking. Fools are easily fooled, that's why Peter Thiel is rich and why you think he'd be a good presidential candidate.
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The economy is tanking and the economy is fine, it's rather mixed right now.
https://www.mauldineconomics.c... [mauldineconomics.com]
"Thiel says they "got way more out of it by going back" after launching their businesses."
That statement is very likely true. I started college after getting out of the navy and had no trouble at all. Watching the clueless children flailing around was quite entertaining, but the was also the realization that I just possibly had been that clueless at 18 myself.
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The economy is showing all the signs of a cyclic top right now: inflation we haven't seen for years, a high stock market, real estate ridiculously overpriced, and yet another speculative bubble forming in cryptocurrencies. It will inevitably turn down before long, and neither major candidate seems to be focusing on softening the landing.
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I hope some day a grownup explains concepts like "hyperbole", "figurative" and "literal" to you. Run along now. You're not even half as clever as you seem to think you are.
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No, this is slashdot where that sort of shit is said in complete seriousness all the time. Maybe you've read a few posts on occasion?
If you're going to pretend you were being hyperbolic or clever then you need to do better. You failed.
And for the umpteenth time, I'm not smart at all. I'm a complete fucking moron. But I am still way smarter than you.
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No, I didn't fail. I just didn't aim low enough to catch the dummies. ;-)
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Next time you're trying to be funny... be funny.
It's funnier that way.
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A good sense of humour is usually taken as a sign of intelligence. So unfortunately, you're never going to know whether or not somebody's funny, or be competent to judge. Embrace this. Deal with it. Very few people are good at everything.
I hope, eventually, you find your niche.
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Dude, you keep coming back with a bigger shovel. We've been over this. Take the L.
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And too stupid to know you've been beaten. You're maybe "way smarter" than a brain-damaged chimp, but even that's a stretch. I do occasionally contribute to charities for people with your "special gifts", so one day, you might get to play with some little kiddie toy I bought for such folks.
Have a lovely day!
So (Score:5, Insightful)
So these amazing people are:
- Cryptobro
- Venture capitalist
- Self-driving-car expert
- AI loan shark
slow claps
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
Elon barely has level 3 on a good day. Level 4+ is a pipe dream. Even the level 2 fucks up a lot.
There is zero chance I'd ever turn on my autopilot much less use the _beta_ "full self drive" which it isn't.
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, they launched nothing of value. No business that actually produces anything or dreams big. And before you say self-driving is a thing, please look for a realistic report on how far along we are before actually developing something that can drive safely as a car, it's not a surprise Elon promises self-driving for about 15 years now and he is basically in the same place he was when he started, can't even get level 4 done in that timespan and money spent. What a startup from a 20yo kid is going to do? Disrupt? You have to be very naive.
That whole experiment is based on a stupid thesis, and a bifurcated one at that. First is that college is worthless, the second that if you just give someone money, they'll become a billionaire somehow, all they needed was the money.
But then there is luck - which has just as big a part. And there is drive, which is 100 percent individual based. And some have said that a person has to be a psychopath in order to become uber-wealthy. I won't go that far, but it doesn't hurt.
Since you mentioned self driving cars...
That whole self driving car thing is a canard. But the technology in it is quite useful for standard human control. My car doesn't self drive, but the lane assist is impressive. You can't use it effectively to drive, it will pingpong between the lines. but it's a good anti-drifting feature. The anti-collision radar and braking has saved my cute little ass a couple times as well as a few animals.
But my favorite thing is the anti-tailgating radar. That should be mandatory on all cars, since some people like to drive so close that they really owe me dinner and a movie before getting that far up my ass.
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if you just give someone money, they'll become a billionaire somehow, all they needed was the money.
You need money, and a willingness to delay gratification. There are plenty of reliable investments out there, and as long as you don't blow the money on some get-rich-quick scheme, any idiot can turn a large pile of money into one that's slightly bigger. It's getting that large pile of money in the first place that's the initial challenge. Hence the expression "the first million is the hardest."
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"...the second that if you just give someone money, they'll become a billionaire somehow, all they needed was the money."
Well, if you give someone a billion dollars, they will become a billionaire. In fact, all they needed was the money.
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"...the second that if you just give someone money, they'll become a billionaire somehow, all they needed was the money."
Well, if you give someone a billion dollars, they will become a billionaire. In fact, all they needed was the money.
And you just had to write that and me read it while I was having a sip of coffee! 8^)
Re:So (Score:5, Funny)
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Because you didn't have quantum computing.
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I am bitter because no-one invested in my sustainable blockchain yoghurt with AI...
If Thiel divided up his funds fairly among everyone who submitted a business proposal, you'd probably get something like $5. You likely already have at least that much in your wallet right now. Invest it wisely. /s
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Exactly my thought. Pathetic list of winners that explain why “modern” capitalism, is practically championing its own demise.
Re: So (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
So these amazing people are:
- Cryptobro
- Venture capitalist
- Self-driving-car expert
- AI loan shark
You forgot they all share one thing in common: Undereducated. These people could still be that *and* have the benefit of a college education to help them.
I'm not sure where this idea came from that successful companies can only be started by people below a certain age or without certain certifications.
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Lots of successful entrepreneurs dropped out of college to start their business, so clearly dropping out of college is a prerequisite for success.
Yeah sarcasm aside the world is run by people who stayed in college. 0.001% of college dropouts getting lucky doesn't mean that is the recipe to incubate success.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Because every time some tech-lord drops out of college and becomes a success it’s fun to talk about.
But when Steve Jobs or Bill Gates dropped out of college it was at practically zero risk to themselves or their ability to graduate some day if they wanted to and they both had very real and concrete things going on, not some vague ideas.
This is really about keeping plebs uneducated before they’re exposed to Ayn Rand.
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Exactly what I noticed. The "successful" ones where those who's ideas were to exploit others. Just the ones Thiel is looking for.
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That term needs to be in quotes because a 19-year-old college dropout is an expert at exactly NOTHING. They will claim it. They will be wrong. Vision is not the same as expertise (and much, much cheaper).
Why should arbitrary social rules trump good ideas (Score:1)
"It's a team sport to get something going and build on it, you can't just be a mad genius, you have to have some social skills and emotional intelligence,"
What if the problem is that, to have emotional intelligence, you have to become a social conformist to such a degree that truly innovative ideas are dismissed out of hand for arbitrary fickle social reasons like "continents just don't drift", "what you can't see can't hurt you", "the universe can't be expanding, because gravity", etc.?
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Re: Why should arbitrary social rules trump good i (Score:3)
Re: Why should arbitrary social rules trump good i (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the part where they are gifted $100,000 is supposed to simulate dumb luck.
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Agreed, it definitely has "let them eat cake" energy.
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The whole endeavor deliberately ignores the massive dose of PURE DUMB LUCK required to drop out of college and become a billionaire. Which cant be tapped on demand. A great deal of inspirational chatter from the billionaire class is a sad attempt to deny the luck that pushed them to the top and justify their view of themselves as ubermen.
Mod this guy up people!
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"you can't just be a mad genius, you have to have some social skills and emotional intelligence,"
Thiel-code for "a psychopath who does not understand how to manipulate other people is a loser."
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Super weird they need the thing that college does the best job at actually teaching you.
What's next, some assurance that they have basic competency in an area of study?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
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"It's a team sport to get something going and build on it, you can't just be a mad genius, you have to have some social skills and emotional intelligence,"
What if the problem is that, to have emotional intelligence, you have to become a social conformist to such a degree that truly innovative ideas are dismissed out of hand for arbitrary fickle social reasons like "continents just don't drift", "what you can't see can't hurt you", "the universe can't be expanding, because gravity", etc.?
Just a note - none us who are in technical or science careers can even make it through life without people dismissing some of our ideas out of hand.
And if we conform to arbitrary fickle social reasons, well, we don't amount to much in our fields.
Using radiative forcing as an example, it's settled physics. There are people who dismiss it out of hand though. Doesn't matter.
People claim that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.E with all creatures created in their modern form. It's proven wrong.
People
So how's it going? (Score:1)
So how's it going?
Some big successes ... blah, blah, blah ....
Ok, but the WSJ article is pay-walled and there is no real answer to that question. The summary doesn't provide much in the way of details except that 25% of these people returned to finish their degree and the rest: "didn't need a college degree." So how many of these businesses succeed, broken down by college returnees and flunk-outs? Did they all universally succeed and become billionaires (sure doesn't sound like it judging by the the fuzzy references to asteroid miners and "lone geniuses with brilliant
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Anyone talking about "needing a college degree" doesn't have anything to say anyway. It's the education that is of value, not the certificate of completion. If you go to school for the degree, your priorities aren't straight.
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There are many sorts of places you can get educated, and only one sort of place you can get a college degree. The degree is of great value; for would-be employees, it's either a minimum requirement or a way of separating yourself from others when jobs are scarce. For an entrepreneur it conveys to would-be investors your seriousness and/or competence. Though "chosen by Thiel" is probably a decent stand-in for that second case.
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Anyone talking about "needing a college degree" doesn't have anything to say anyway. It's the education that is of value, not the certificate of completion. If you go to school for the degree, your priorities aren't straight.
That sounds like something somebody would say who started the process of obtaining knowledge, dropped out and now wants to get all the benefits of having finished what he started without ever actually doing so. You don't get a medal for dropping out of the marathon and never crossing the finish line. If a degree is proof of anything, at the very least it proves that you have the persistence, character and ability to start a very difficult process and finish it. For an employer that has to be just about the
So the "best" examples are already bogus... (Score:1)
What a great success story! These people should have stayed in college, maybe then they would have gotten some actual understanding of things.
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These people should have stayed in college, maybe then they would have gotten some actual understanding of things.
For most people, college is just a means to earn a better living. If you can skip over that right to the part where you're earning decent money, why not?
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The difference is that, at least in a good STEM course, you learn a lot of stuff in college that makes it far easier to keep your skills current later. If you just go for "earning money now", you have a good chance of being really screwed later.
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What kind of utterly crappy college did you go to?
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I am on campuses almost every day. Just in Europe. Well, I guess if US colleges have stopped teaching valuable things, then the US is doomed as a nation.
A team sport? (Score:2)
Wow its almost like (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost as if the most precious resource for a sociopath is other, young sociopaths to own, so why not start a "venture capital" business that invests in, to identify, young sociopaths?
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost as if the most precious resource for a sociopath is other, young sociopaths to own, so why not start a "venture capital" business that invests in, to identify, young sociopaths?
A sociopath doesn't want to invite competition. The best way to adopt your thesis is if the thinking sociopath wanted to find, then eliminate anyone that might be in their way.
college isnt for everyone (Score:2)
While college is not for everyone, it sounds like college is for this group of dropouts. The number of Gates or Zuckerberg types out there is really low, and those guys didn't need someone like Thiel to find their way. The ideas that worked from Gates and Zuckerberg were grounded in things they could actually accomplish, they didn't really need to develop new science at first. I'd guess Thiel should select for ruthlessness and get out of the way.
Money more important than education for success (Score:2)
Tax The Rich!
A Faustian bargain (Score:2)
Not even, only (Score:2)
About a quarter of the Thiel fellows eventually returned to college to finish their degrees, suggesting that even the dropouts see enduring value in higher education.
Nope. By saying "even the dropouts" you are claiming the dropouts, and other people from the group, saw value in higher education...
In fact what really occurred is that since ONLY the dropouts went back to college, only those who couldn't make ideas work found value and not even all of those.
When given a real choice in life only 25% of people t
Success is easy... (Score:2)
Have significant wealth and a network of connections gifted to you by right of birth - essentially have wealthy parents. Now be an empathy-lacking asshole.
With those three things, your odds of success just shot through the roof. Even if you fail, it'll probably be spun to look like a success to sell your next attempt.
When you look at 'self-made billionaires', they make up a only few of the thousands of billionaires in the world.
Thiel is a ridiculous sociopath. (Score:2)