Peter Thiel Believes the Future Belongs to College Dropouts

http://gawker.com/#!5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-cou...

Let me weight in on what I think are the pros and cons to higher education. (I go to a Canadian University so this is related to my experience in Canada)

Pros:

Life goals/direction - Growing up, going to university has definitely given me a direction and goal to peruse. How dangerous would it be if the younger generation had no direction, but simply just aspired to be an "entrepreneur"

Networks - University has given me access to a huge network of professors, established industry professionals (through events/networking sessions etc), role models and up-and-coming talents

Exposure - Exposure in terms of being exposed to different types fields, career options, co-op program is a +

Career Opportunity - Whether we like it or not, going to higher education and advertising that you go to a reputable school is a criteria for HR to weed out good candidates from the bad. Just showing that you can get into a better university says something about you.

Fundamental thinking/critical thinking skills - While uni has not taught me what I needed to know for my career it definitely has built the foundation.

Fun + social experiences

Cons:

Cost - ridiculous, in a recent convo with my friend he describe it to be a $40,000 party

Career learning - not there, I learned more from on-job training, reading blogs and interviewing industry professionals

Like-mindedness - esp with the management program, I find that the teaching is based on measuring units, quantifying experiences and not giving people the room to grow as artists. In the marketing field, you can't quantify everything, we are training too many scientist and not enough artists

Overall, I can't generalize that without higher education the younger generation will be lost for directions. There is definitely a lot of young talents who are already well developed into the senior years of their high school or even prior. But remember this is a confusing time and chaotic time for us. teens now days have so much more to worry about. Not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur, you have to give the opportunity to the right people. For the rest, it is just like giving wings to Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and be burned.

Your thoughts?

Lichi

Re: your comment, you're absolutely right that entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and that many people will benefit more from college than without. However, Thiel doesn't argue that everyone should dropout of college. Rather, he claims that the best and brightest don't necessarily need it, and would be better served with "freedom" from education.

Should we burn down Harvard? Definitely not. But you don't need it to be successful!

Not to mention that if government actually did evaporate they likely wouldn't be so happy with the end result.