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Education

Palantir's 'Meritocracy Fellowship' Urges High School Grads to Skip College's 'Indoctrination' and Debt (thestreet.com) 115

Posted by EditorDavid from the lower-education dept.
Stanford law school graduate Peter Thiel later co-founded Facebook, PayPal, and Palantir. But in 2010 Thiel also created the Thiel Fellowship, which annually gives 20 to 30 people under the age of 23 $100,000 "to encourage students to not stick around college." (College students must drop out in order to accept the fellowship.)

And now Palantir "is taking a similar approach as it maneuvers to attract new talent," reports financial news site The Street: The company has launched what it refers to as the "Meritocracy Fellowship," a four-month internship program for recent high school graduates who have not enrolled in college. The position pays roughly $5,400 per month, more than plenty of post-college internship programs. Palantir's job posting suggests that the company is especially interested in candidates with experience in programming and statistical analysis.
Palantir's job listing specifically says they launched their four-month fellowship "in response to the shortcomings of university admissions," promising it would be based "solely on merit and academic excellence" (requiring an SAT score over 1459 or an ACT score above 32.) "Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence..." As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos... Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree...

Upon successful completion of the Meritocracy Fellowship, fellows that have excelled during their time at Palantir will be given the opportunity to interview for full-time employment at Palantir.

Palantir's 'Meritocracy Fellowship' Urges High School Grads to Skip College's 'Indoctrination' and Debt More | Reply

Palantir's 'Meritocracy Fellowship' Urges High School Grads to Skip College's 'Indoctrination' and Debt

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  • Off to college to get some dept, indoctrination and exremelism.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I love the poorly educated

      -Donald Trump

      • All politicians do.

  • "real time" analytics with an AI twist. Lots of data, need to provide instant decisions. Used by military among other industries

  • the company is especially interested in candidates with experience in ... statistical analysis

    So, the thiel bunch would have turned down Kolmogorov then, eh?

  • Does it really count as dropping out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:06PM (#65303605)
    If you've got rich parents and you know damn well you can just go right back?

    So if my kid dropped out they'd be losing the post high school grants that we absolutely needed to afford getting them through college. So dropping out wasn't an option. They had one shot at college and they knew it and they knew if they blew it it was over and they were going to spend the rest of their lives driving Uber and working at Walmart.

    If your parents are much much better off then my loser ass then that's not the case. You can take a year off and go travel Europe. You can spend some time getting contacts and take a chance starting a business and then if it doesn't work out, which should probably won't, you can go right back to college and get your degrees so you can get on with your life.

    I say this because like a lot of things this bullshit is implying that something only a handful of people in extraordinary circumstances can do is a normal thing that we should all be expected to do. And they are doing that because they have nasty little ulterior motives. In this case they want to eliminate higher education for regular people because they don't like well-educated people. Well educated people don't do what they're told. And propaganda doesn't work as well on them if at all

    • Do you really believe this:

      "They had one shot at college and they knew it and they knew if they blew it it was over and they were going to spend the rest of their lives driving Uber and working at Walmart."

      There are many ways to make a living so generalizing is unwise. My HS peers believed this and a fair number are in rough economic shape in retirement as their formerly valuable skills are too common globally to permit them to compete in an ageist reality.

      OTOH my military contemporaries are generally doing

      • I found that old people refuse to acknowledge that things have changed.

        Wages are much lower than when we were kids and better paying jobs demand advanced degrees because they want to hire cheap labor from overseas because they can work them harder and pay them less.

        This means that if you're a college bound kid your parents have just enough resources to help you through you get one single solitary shot through college. That's because once you drop out and start working you're never going to be able to

      • Re:Do you really believe (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @09:42PM (#65303727)

        The military is a very different set of circumstances and an equally consequential choice (With some very serious , potentially life-altering, downsides if you happen to get deployed into a hot war, as the Iraq and Afghanistan vets will tell you). And the benefit you get is likely to be the college opportunities offered to those who do service.

        Thats not going to be an option for everyone who cant afford college. Some people dont have the physique (I sure as hell didn't, I was skinny short kid), some people dont have the mental disposition, some folks just dont want that to be their life. And without college they are at a considerable disadvantage. If they are lucky they can pick up a manual trade apprenticeship, if they are unlucky, they'll be pushing shopping trolley, or worse, weights in prison.

        The US needs to seriously consider either free college, or if that unlikely option is off the table, a system similar to what australia and some others have, where the treasury gives an interest free loan thats repaid by a small increase in income tax (I repaid about $4K a year via a 5% increase in tax rate) which in theory shouldn't be counted as liabilities towards homeloans or whatever.

        • Ironically, we had "free" college... the GI Bill and the Army College Fund, but because of the university price hikes, those can't really cover anything.

          The military takes a lot of know-how and people skills. Piss off the wrong NCO or officer, and they can make your life a living hell... or effectively end any meaning your life has.

          What we need are more trades. IMHO, IT should be a trade with a self-regulating body, like plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or even law.

          • The GI Bill may not cover all of the education you want, but it can be a great help. And, of course, there's also the VA Medical Benefits that cut down your health care costs even if you're lucky enough that you don't have any Service Connected Disabilities with the free medical care and monthly compensation for the rest of your life. Of course, that's never going to be an option for you because judging only by the post I'm replying to you'd never have the discipline to survive in any branch of the servic

        • We have "free college" in Tennessee and I believe in Kentucky as well. Most kids still opt for the "big university" experience, but you can become a nurse or teacher in Tennessee without having to pay anything.

          • COmmunity college costs covered by taxpayers? I'm sorry more don't take advantage of that. I did, and then got a job with tuition assistance and went at night...long years of work+school but you pay one way or the other. My community college wasn't free but it was way less than any live away school. And I got a good education. And the best thing? If you flunk physics 3 it doesn't affect your GPA after you transfer.
        • Those pushing shopping trolleys are lucky. The unlucky ones end up living in involuntary servitude, working for family members in exchange for a meal, and a place to sleep. No wages, or maybe 2 dollars a day as an allowance (which they are expected to use to cover the gifts required for birthdays and holidays of those who boss them around), while being treated like shit, for not having a job. And if they are unlucky enough to live in a not so developed area, then there's almost no chance of them getting an

      • There are many ways to make a living so generalizing is unwise.

        There are exceptions to conventional wisdom, but we call them exceptions because that's what they are. These days you need a degree even to get fairly pathetic jobs which really shouldn't require one, and if you want a really good job, you need a good degree. Subaquatic fibrous matrices engineering doesn't do the trick any more.

        OTOH my military contemporaries are generally doing quite nicely as am I.

        Sure, there's lots of money in the baby-killing industry.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      So if my kid dropped out they'd be losing the post high school grants that we absolutely needed to afford getting them through college. So dropping out wasn't an option. They had one shot at college and they knew it and they knew if they blew it it was over and they were going to spend the rest of their lives driving Uber and working at Walmart.

      If they got a $100,000 grant for doing it, they could wait a few years until the grant was fully vested and couldn't be taken back, then use that $100,000 to pay for college at one of the smaller state universities and still have over $50k left over to spend on whatever.

      • They were worth about $40,000. If you aren't continuously going to school you don't get them and if you have a break can't just reapply for them. We couldn't afford to lose $40,000. So my kid either finished college or they spent the rest of their lives without a college degree. Luckily things held together long enough for them to get through college. They certainly didn't have a lack of work ethic or focus but life has a tendency to kick my family when they're down.

        I thought there was light at the end o

    • The crazy wealthy bajillionaires like to attribute their wealth to their hard work ethic. It's good for their egos to deny the massive, massive amount of luck involved. It's not entirely untrue, most people aren't getting anywhere unless they also work hard, but this isn't even close to being a majority predictor - there are millions, probably tens of millions of people in the US that work harder (yes, Elon, harder) than Musk or Thiel or Oprah or any unctuous billionaire. They're just doing it working 3 s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. For every one of those rather mediore-skilled assholes, there are 1'000'000 that do not make it despite having skills on the same level.

    • Sssh. The fact that 'meritocracy' is an aristocracy that makes the occasional economic diversity hire, rather than the radical utopia of social mobility, is supposed to be the quiet part. We called it 'meritocracy', so obviously now there are no barriers except lack of merit; which means anyone who opposes us must be jealous losers.

  • So no college, and they pay you for 4 months (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:06PM (#65303609)

    ... and then the "best" you can hope for is an interview?

    It's pretty obvious they're not looking for the cream of the crop. Actually, it's pretty obvious this is basically just a stunt.

  • Statistical analysis experience? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suutar ( 1860506 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:07PM (#65303611)

    I was unaware that high schools taught statistical analysis. Or even statistics. I didn't get into that til my 2nd year of college. (Maybe third. Don't remember exactly.)

  • As an older developer, this raises my eyebrows.

  • so you can be like Elon Musk (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cjonslashdot ( 904508 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:12PM (#65303627)
    ignorant of history and human rights and lacking any understanding of the world except for your narrow, simple minded tech that you learned on the job.

    • Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/White... [reddit.com]

    • Re:so you can be like Elon Musk (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:36PM (#65303669) Homepage

      This is part of Trump and his cronies attacking education. They want to enforce a right wing political bias [ think uncritical acceptance of Fox news narrative ]; education encourages people to observe, evaluate and think and results in many being left thinking. This is a treat to the Republicans in future elections which is why they want to stamp it out.

      This, combined with attacks of free speech, cutting of funding for studies that do not fit in with Trump's narrow agenda, similar shuttering of parts of government and agencies, has many of the USA's brightest academics and researchers worried. The result could well be a brain drain of the best from the USA. Universities in Europe and elsewhere are already inviting job applications. The MAGA crowd will prolly rejoice at this [ they do not like facts and education ] but this will be bad for the USA long term, it will fall behind the rest of the world.

      Hopefully the billionaire mafia will be thrown out of the White House in 4 years time and damage limited.

    • Re:so you can be like Elon Musk (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cyberpunk Reality ( 4231325 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @10:52PM (#65303829)
      Not just ignorant. This will create a class of narrowly educated people who are utterly dependent on Thiel and Palatir to keep themselves above minimum wage labor. Thiel is trying to create an corp of foot soldiers who will lack both the education and economic freedom to resist whatever evil he dreams up.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Whoops. Missed this one during my first searches. Not quite "Just so", but I mostly concur. I'd say "moral education" for "education" as a minimal refinement... PT wants his tools to be well educated in low-level tactics and in how to use their weapons, but not to think about who they are harming.

    • You overestimate the liberal arts content of a four-year compSci degree.

      • "You overestimate the liberal arts content of a four-year compSci degree."
        Hi.
        Maybe, for liberal arts. But I have a BS (and two masters) and in the BS I learned a great deal. I learned economics, and psychology, and many "liberal arts" areas that I think were important foundations for understanding the world.
        On the tech side, I learned physics and electronics and mathematics - especially the theory. Those are things that are not easily learned on one's own.
        Knowing the theory is important, IMO.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, Elonia and other ulra-rich fuckups think that of course it was their superior skills that got them where they are. In actual reality, they got very lucky repeatedly and 1000s of other fuckups with the same pathetic skills did not get lucky. But nobody sees them.

      • They got lucky sometimes, they got to take advantage of privilege other times, let's not boil it all down to luck when there's no shortage of privileged people helping other privileged people specifically to protect their privilege involved in the process.

      • Yes, the role of luck is often dismissed by them. But to succeed in a startup you have to have all three of these:

        1. the right time for the idea - i.e. LUCK.
        2. diligence/persistence/hard work.
        3. the capability to do pull it off.

  • Building the next billionaire is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:16PM (#65303633)
    NOT something that can be engineered. Climbing into the billionaire class requires a massive amount of sheer dumb luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Meeting the exact right people and saying exactly the right things to them. Taking a swing at the ball and knocking it out of the park a hundred times in a row. Even a genius cant make that happen without pure good luck. Billionaires dont like to think about this fact. This program will help people but not in the way Theil thinks it will. These people will take the money, fail at the business, and then go back to school as an older, wiser student. Older students in college tend to do WAY better than the 18-year-olds.

    • Honestly most of them are Nepo babies. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:27PM (#65303657)
      The rest blundered into really really huge government contracts.

      A lot of luck and a lot of talent might get you into the multimillionaire class but if you are going to get into the billionaire class you either need a ton of government money or you need lots of connections or both.

      Seriously pick a couple of random billionaires and then dig into where they're fortune came from and that's what you'll find. Like the old saying goes never ask a man how he made his first billion. Then again remember when that phrase was never ask a man how he made his first million? And we're well on our way to trillions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by irchans ( 527097 )
        When I tried to determine if most billionaires are self made or not I mostly found articles that indicated that over half of the billionaires are self made. I guess it depends on how you define self made. It also seems that most of the billionaires that are self made are men. That might be because of discrimination. https://www.chicagobooth.edu/r... [chicagobooth.edu]
        • One of my buddy's loves to repeat the mantra that anyone could be ultra rich like Elon or Trump if they started out with a few million. My reply is always: That explains all of those billionaire lottery winners.
          • Trump didn't start out with a few million. He was handed a billion-dollar real-estate empire by his father. The official valuation of the empire had been depressed by probably-fraudulent accounting strategies (what a surprise) so he could get the inheritance and avoid taxes. This happened sometime around 2000 iirc. Trump then proceeded to grow his billion-dollar empire, over 20 years, into a business worth, wait for it, 800 million dollars. He didn't match the inflation rate. He didn't even break even. He l
            • You need to contact Wikipedia, Forbes and Bloomberg. They have it all wrong on Trump's wealth. From Wikipedia:

              For decades, Forbes has assessed his wealth, currently estimating it at $4.1 billion as of early April 2025. Meanwhile, Bloomberg estimated his wealth at $7.08 billion in January 2025, although Trump himself claims a much higher net worth.

              They also say Musk borrowed $28,000 from his father to start his first company Zip2 which he sold for $307 million. So, he didn't really start with a few million.

              • At this point, most of Trumps wealth is bound up in his status as potus. Truth Social (I just vomited a little) is probably valued at a hundred tryyylllllyyuunnn dollars, and a lot of his other assets are probably amped up similarly. A lot of foreign money is pumping up his value right now because people want to buy influence. That’ll all evaporate in 2027-2028. We’ll see if his valuation survives the end of his presidency. I doubt it. That family will be back to running casinos and hotels into
    • I suspect that billionaires(or even millionaires, or even not-3rd-world-slum-dwellers) don't like to think about survivorship bias; but when the question is how other people should be trained I doubt they find the odds all that concerning.

      Thiel would presumably prefer to get someone actually punchy who feels like he owes him out of this(consider, for example, the utility he gained by setting up JD Vance as a relatively minor, but rather more successful than he otherwise would have been, VC bro) and at le

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dstwins ( 167742 )
      Yes, but those "older and wiser" students are usually going to be more "conservative" in their mindset. (Its been widely studied and while some people maintain their beliefs overtime, most do become more socially (which often translates to politically) conservative overtime as they age (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics) as they are more focused on "job" and not on finding out their skill sets/interests and other social learning

  • I've often thought of this in the context of graduate education. My opinion (confirmed by experience) is that people who get their BS and then move straight on to rack up additional credentials aren't really that complete when they come out the other side with a PhD and nothing else at age 26 or 27. Most of them choose this path by inertia rather than informed decisionmaking.

    But it's the people who come back to do a master's or a PhD after some nontrivial amount of time in the workforce who are more valuabl

    • more jobs need the union apprenticeship system & hiring hall.

      If you have lots's of people that do temp projects better to have with an union system and not an rip off temp agency.

    • My impression is that universities aren't so much the sole class of institution charged with the responsibility; but the main one that quite overtly embraces the objective and does what it can to provide clear signaling mechanisms like academic degrees and clear 'do you want to learn about X? Take X 202: A Not Complete Layman's Examination of X" course offerings.

      It's not like anyone believes that this is the only way to learn things; or nobody would ask for 'years of experience' or document or look at em

  • Post-secondary should be free, as in beer (Score:3)

    by GrahamJ ( 241784 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @09:14PM (#65303699)

    If Thiel believes in meritocracy then he should advocate for government-funded post-secondary education. Level the playing field by offering everyone the same education. There's no selection bias if everyone is selected.

    But of course that's not what he believes, he simply wants his people to be the ones in charge of the opaque selection process.

    • I think you will find that when university is free as in beer, it is rationed. There is not an unlimited amount of money or an unlimited number of places for students. Then, how and when are students selected for further education? In Germany, they generally decide each student's entire future at age 14 - gymnasium or not. Is that a good system?

      So, we tax working class people to pay for the higher educations of students who have enough advantages by age 14 to win the meritocracy - in other words, not the wo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GrahamJ ( 241784 )

        There's a spot for everyone in elementary and high school; why stop there? Certainly a line has to be drawn somewhere but kicking kids out of school before they have any job skills is just bad policy. It's the US so clearly there will be haves and have-nots but the have-nots should at least get a college education imo.

      • unlimited student loans leads to
        BS fees
        unless classes
        rip off meal plans
        books that change all the time.
        etc.

      • It could work a bit better with a (reasonable) debt setup combined with a grant based on where you work. The government does its forecasts of what kind of grads the economy will need in 4-8 years and offers a combination of need-based subsidies and loans to encourage people to enter the programs. If you give up or fail out, you have some debt, but if you graduate you get a significant percentage off your monthly debt payments based on the local need for your skills.

        If you're smart and willing to work wher

      • This is a stupid take, so stupid even the current US education system contradicts it. Is primary and secondary education "rationed" around you? No. Every child gets it, and is mandated to attend it. There are enough schools for everyone, because the government is mandated to provide them.

        And then, in civilized countries university is free or almost-free in the beer sense. The only programs that have limited space are the ones where the available jobs are few (like art conservators), or the academic re

    • Exactly. And if he is so anti-woke that means he doesn't believe that being born into wealth offers any advantages. Therefore he should be in favour of a 100% inheritance tax.

  • Go there for 4 months, earn 20k, then go to college anyway.

  • .....and run in the opposite direction:
    1) "I wouldn't lie, I'm a christian"; and
    2) Meritocracy.

  • That's not only more than plenty of post-college internship programs, that's more than plenty of post-college full-time jobs that ask for a degree!

  • Palantir to the rescue! (Score:3)

    by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Sunday April 13, 2025 @11:38PM (#65303913) Journal
    No more being indoctrinated with quantum mechanics, solid state physics, synthetic biology, analytical chemistry or them high-faluttin' medical witchcraft. In fact, Palantir is saving us from the sort of indoctrination you get in law school that might make you compete with its founders and know their errors.

    • I always laugh / cry when people say something about "stop indoctrination!" because what they really mean is "we don't want that kind of indoctrination, we want this kind!"

      What we really need as a society is critical thinking skills, the ability to draw conclusions from evidence instead of reporting only supporting evidence for a preconceived conclusion and suppressing other evidence. We need to have people that can determine if the evidence is complete and conclusive, not just matching what people want emo

  • I mean yes, many Big-"Tech" companies will collect massive amounts of data, but that's just a side effect for them. They know, for example, about trans-persons, but they don't do it to harm them.

    On the other hand Palantir explicitly collects that data to give it to their customers. So they deliberately make lists of trans-persons... in order to give that information to the local dictatorship.

    So while you might justify working for companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon, as they do make useful prod

  • We want everyone to have equal outcomes. Just because a person might have an exceptional skillset doesn't mean they should be paid more than someone who doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. /s

    I don't know a whole lot about Palintir, but I do have a difficult time understanding the hate some have for employing the most skilled and capable person for the job.

    I do know a lot about the social indoctrination that goes on in colleges, and it is vehemently anti-meritocracy. And so many degrees q

  • Without a degree the employee will be find it exceedingly hard to find equivalent employment elsewhere. Thus at best lowering their ability to negotiate future pay increases while having little recourse to abuse. And as most people know the biggest pay increases almost always happen when you switch employers. This path closes off most of those possibilities as well. Basically leaves them with only three rational options. To stay in the same company with little negotiating leverage, start your own company, o

  • And if they decide to not offer you a job, lets see whether college takes you back. Or not.

    This thing must be a stunt. Nobody actually smart will fall for it.

  • I was decent coder before entering university. And I could probably pick up some skills and some maths along the way while doing stuff.

    But to really understand how Fourier transforms work you need to go to college. And spend real time thinking about it vs picking something as you go along.

    So, no, I would not recommend this to anyone who wants to be something more than a coding monkey.

  • But I'm sure PT won't be recruiting around here.

    Anyway the major miss is for Funny. I think the story had large potential, and though I lack the ability to write funny, I was disappointed not to find any. I did search for quite a while in the "discussion". Closest to funny was a misspelling of debt by a PT supporter who was probably an AI bot introducing the spelling errors to seem more credible as a human being.

    Also no insight located. The point of PT's evil approach is to get 'em before they know the diff

  • Bernie can tell you how. It doesn't even cost that much, and in exchange the next generation of workers have marketable skills and higher paying jobs and pay more into taxes and social security.

    I can't fix the indoctrination aspect, because there's no cure for what ails Peter Thiel's mind.

  • Like living out from under the thumb of strict parents and losing your virginity? There is more to college than the liberal indoctrination Thiel thinks he is offering.

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