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Do these kids have what it takes to make it without a degree?
Written by Steve Henn and Amy Scott
Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and one of the first investors in Facebook, is a billionaire and a Stanford graduate. But Thiel believes there is a higher education bubble in America. He says college in this country is overpriced and overvalued. So he's paying 20 of the best young minds of this generation $100,000 each to skip school and start businesses instead.
If you want feel like a lazy slacker, check out the bios of some of the Thiel Fellows (pdf). Many of these kids are idealistic, ambitious and impressive. If you can't stomach reading about all two dozen, here are a couple highlights.
Eden Full is a sophomore at Princeton. She's developed a low-cost technology that allows solar panels to track the sun throughout the day. She believes the device can boost electrical output on a typical panel by up to 40 percent. She calls her invention the Sun Saluter (think yoga). Last summer, she built a working prototype in Kenya, bringing electricity to a rural village for the first time.
You can't watch this video or talk to her for two minutes and not walk away rooting for this kid.
Andrew Hsu is also pretty impressive. He's not dropping out of college because he already got his degree. Instead, he is walking away from the fourth year of his Ph.D program at Stanford. This was Hsu in a university genetics lab at age 12.
Still, no matter how brilliant and precocious you are, life without a degree can be daunting. Just ask Joi Ito. Ito's the new head of MIT's Media Lab. He's also a college dropout.
"A lot of things that I learned on my own could have been more easily learned at a university, if you happened to be in the right place and the right university with the right people around," he said. Before MIT, and after leaving college without a degree, Ito became a successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He's helping launch LinkedIn in Japan.
"Obviously some people will learn a lot and will be fine dropping out," Ito said during an interview from Japan. "But just because you drop out and get a job doesn't mean you're going to be learning a lot."
And he warns even for the exceptionally talented kid, and many of the Thiel fellows are exceptional, not having a degree can present some challenges. Just because you happen to be brilliant doesn't mean your story will end like Bill Gates'.
"One of my mentors is Stanford Ovshinsky, who invented the field of amorphous materials," Ito said. "He's a high school dropout, but he's got [hundreds] of patents and is one of the most amazing physicists around." But it took years -- and ultimately recognition by an academic -- before Ovshinsky's research was acknowledged. "It required a higher institution like MIT to give this validity," Ito said.
Learn more by listening to our story on the Thiel fellowship and the value of college education today on Marketplace.
This is a very provocative topic for America to be having. My son has just finished his first year of college. In discussing the college option 2 years ago, one of the things I threw on the table was that if he wanted to learn how to make brie cheese (a dream he expressed), we could seek an apprentice opportunity in France and he could learn to make brie cheese. His big question was what could he do with that knowledge? Well, make brie cheese! I received my B.A. in 1990. I had a series of jobs that offered varied experiences, however, none "required" a college degree. When I finally sought a job that would offer a higher income, health insurance and a retirement fund, my experience and college degree translate. Now I am an artist living on my ability to creatively think. I told my son he needed to be certain he wanted to do something that required a college degree before deciding to go, and to choose a school that would NOT start him out in debt. He wants to be a teacher and he is on full academic scholarship at a state school. Our primary education system creates automatons who are discouraged from the beginning to use creative thinking, (No Child Left Behind translates to All Children Have Sub-Par Educations That Don’t Compete on the Global Scale) I have several friends who teach at the University level and many students are unable to write clearly, think creatively, and are clueless about what they want from their education upon entering college. I agree that a college experience can help critical thinking abilities, but so can apprenticing in a field of real interest and being challenged by the challenges in life! Most importantly, I think everyone should have an encouraged opportunity to succeed in whatever field speaks to his/her heart. Some require the knowledge gleaned from a higher education. Some do not! Our false economy is imploding and the inflated “American Dream†is looking less and less like an attainable goal…with or without the college degree!
Not every college education pays for itself, and, yes, some folks can do much better by going into business instead of college. That said, I'd hire a college-educated person any day over a person without college. Whether it's the college education itself or a self-selection factor, I don't know, but I have consistently found a significant difference between my college-educated employees and non-college-educated employees in their critical thinking abilities. Also, I do know some folks without a college education that have done quite well monetarily, but I wouldn't ever consider trading my college education for their money.
graduates I interview, and can say when my clients ask us to provide a "just out of college go-getter" they too are equally disappointed. now I must admit after skimming through 20-to-30 candidates I do come across some very sharp, well versed college graduates, but they seem to be the exception rather than the norm. I have also come across a growing group of software developers that have NOT been formally trained in software development and many of them are impressive. I believe some of our industrial age thinking, especially regarding higher education must be redesigned to reflect the accelerated pace of the information age.
Cort.
graduates I interview, and can say when my clients ask us to provide a "just out of college go-getter" they too are equally disappointed. now I must admit after skimming through 20-to-30 candidates I do come across some very sharp, well versed college graduates, but they seem to be the exception rather than the norm. I have also come across a growing group of software developers that have NOT been formally trained in software development and many of them are impressive. I believe some of our industrial age thinking, especially regarding higher education must be redesigned to reflect the accelerated pace of the information age.
Cort.
