http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/pe...s-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/Peter Thiel: We�re in a Bubble and It�s Not the Internet. It�s Higher Education.
by Sarah Lacy
Tech Crunch, April 10, 2011
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Thiel�s solution to opening the minds of those who can�t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the �20 Under 20″ program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.
Two weeks ago, Thiel quietly invited 45 finalists to San Francisco for interviews. Everyone who was invited attended� no hysterical parents in sight. Thiel and crew have started to winnow the finalists down to the final 20. They�ll be announced in the next few weeks.
While a controversial program for many in the press, plenty of students, their parents and people in tech have been wildly supportive. Thiel received more than 400 applications and most were from very high-end schools, including about seventeen applicants from Stanford. And more than 100 people in his network have signed up to be mentors to them.
Thiel thinks there�s been a sea-change in the last three years, as debt has mounted and the economy has faltered. �This wouldn�t have been feasible in 2007,� he says. �Parents see kids moving back home after college and they�re thinking, �Something is not working. This was not part of the deal.� We got surprisingly little pushback from parents.� Thiel notes a handful of students told him that whether they were selected or not, they were leaving school to start a company. Many more built tight relationships with competing applicants during the brief Silicon Valley retreat� a sort of support group of like-minded restless students.
Of course, if the problem Thiel sees with the higher education bubble is elitism, why were so many of the invitees Ivy League kids? Where were the smart inner-city kids let down by economic blight and a failing education system of a city like Detroit; the kids who need to be lifted up the most? Thiel notes it wasn�t all elites. Many of the applicants came from other countries, some from remote villages in emerging markets.
<my comment>
I will almost certainly encourage my children to go to college, but I do think it is oversold. College graduates earn more than non-graduates not just because of what they learn in college but because they are on average more intelligent and persevering than non-graduates.
