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Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

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Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#51

Post by aksbhat »

mmaunder wrote: post #38

Context: "Vivek Wadhwa is .. a Faculty and Advisor, Singularity University, Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School, Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University." Wadhwa is a beneficiary of the college fees he is advoc…

Harvard affiliates? There are no Harvard affiliates but there are higher education affiliates, which are called as universities. Harvard itself is one such affiliate in some sense.

Universities are a result of Theory of The Firm, since a university is generally restricted to small geographic region, it can decrease the transaction costs between the various components of higher education. However if you franchise a university across multiple locations, the net transaction costs go up.

E.g. University of California system can be considered as an affiliate system. However you would still find one UC e.g. Berkeley more reputed than other e.g. Santa Barbara.

Peter Thiel incorrectly assumes, that a University system can share a lot of resources between distant geographic locations. However most of the resources such as faculty, labs cannot be shared. Thus you are better off increase capacity of students rather than branching out.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#52

Post by petegrif »

If we set aside for a moment the worthy and edifying nature of education and focus on today's cost Thiel has a legitimate point. In a world in which employment opportunities are shrinking taking on a huge amount of debt for a qualification which apparently doesn't afford job prospects and a salary which are in line with such debt is a widespread and unsustainable problem. And this is a problem which is becoming acute. Education costs continue to rise even as economic prospects become more precarious. Those of us who live in the US cannot count on continued economic global dominance to underwrite domestic full employment. This is a huge change we are barely starting to get our heads around.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#53

Post by possibilistic »

Eliezer wrote: post #36
hristov wrote: post #19

The dean of the Stanford engineering school has a very good point. Peter Thiel's dropout scholarhips are very much a rigged experiment. First he is going to select the brightest kids in the best schools. These kids already have higher than usual chance of success. Then he is going to give them 100k each. That will also increase their chances of success. Then he is going help them with advice and networking as much as…

This is not an experiment. This is challenging the blind assumption of higher education, taking direct aim at the prestige of higher education, and disproving the belief that anyone who can stays in college and that people who drop out are automatically losers. Peter Thiel is saying with his money that he believes that bright, ambitious people are better off staying out of college. Will this prove it to the rigorous…

I'm sure that with Peter Thiel's money and connections even mediocre students would out perform their peers. Having one or both of these is a significant part of the game.

I personally view this as a publicity stunt. I imagine it cannot be replicated in fields such as mathematics or biochemistry.

It may be fun to watch...

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#54

Post by kenjackson »

One thing that struck me about this debate is college athletics. In particular basketball and football as athletes in those sports tend to make money from day 1 in college (although the money is made for the college/NCAA). Despite the fact that there are minor league versions for both of these sports, they aren't well regarded.

It would seem like minor league basketball is what Thiel is advocating, yet no one is interested in going to it, nor recruiting from it. The best players are recruited from college, and that seems to be the way everyone likes it.

There are always the occassional superstars at a young age -- Gates/Zuckerberg...James/Bryant, but they are clearly rare and imitating them is almost certainly folly. No one would suggest recruiting directly from high school is a good idea on a scale of more than a couple of athletes per year (at most). Just thoughts.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#55

Post by _delirium »

fleitz wrote: post #25

I think the issue is not so much with education but schooling, of course being educated is essential to success but what isn't essential is spending $250K on an Ivy League degree. Peter didn't say 'be ignorant' he said spending $250K on an Ivy League education is a waste of money and that the asset is overpriced. There is a price where Harvard makes sense, however $250K isn't it.

I'm not sure it changes the general point, but Harvard in particular is much cheaper for most people. Students from families making under $60k/yr are not charged any tuition, and those under $180k/yr are charged 10% of their family income. So, for example, a student whose family makes $150k/yr would pay $15k/yr, or $60k over 4 years. Only students from quite well off families would pay anything near $250k. (And those reductions are outright tuition reductions, not loans.)

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#56

Post by danenania »

kenjackson wrote: post #54

One thing that struck me about this debate is college athletics. In particular basketball and football as athletes in those sports tend to make money from day 1 in college (although the money is made for the college/NCAA). Despite the fact that there are minor league versions for both of these sports, they aren't well regarded. It would seem like minor league basketball is what Thiel is advocating, yet no one is inte…

I think the primary difference between athletics and entrepreneurship is the natural talent/experience equation. In a sport like basketball, a certain level of inborn talent and physical prowess is required. No amount of practice and experience will get you into the pros if you don't have the talent to begin with. There are also strongly diminishing returns for experience because as you get smarter about the game, physical aging reduces your abilities in other ways.

Entrepreneurship is extremely different because experience holds much more weight and can easily overcome a lack of natural talent (in a skill like programming, for instance), or open up a new role. Someone who drops out of school to join the NBA and then gets laughed at by recruiters is basically screwed. Someone who drops out of school to build a prototype and gets laughed at by VCs or customers now has much more practical experience than his friends who are still in school and is in a good position to either try again or look for a job with the valuable skills he's gained through his failed attempt.

All this talk of 'superstars' and 'lottery winners' completely misses the point. If you want to be an entrepreneur, trying to be an entrepreneur, regardless of how badly you fail, is guaranteed to teach you relevant skills. Expensive colleges are not.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#57

Post by ori_b »

Eliezer wrote: post #36
hristov wrote: post #19

The dean of the Stanford engineering school has a very good point. Peter Thiel's dropout scholarhips are very much a rigged experiment. First he is going to select the brightest kids in the best schools. These kids already have higher than usual chance of success. Then he is going to give them 100k each. That will also increase their chances of success. Then he is going help them with advice and networking as much as…

This is not an experiment. This is challenging the blind assumption of higher education, taking direct aim at the prestige of higher education, and disproving the belief that anyone who can stays in college and that people who drop out are automatically losers. Peter Thiel is saying with his money that he believes that bright, ambitious people are better off staying out of college. Will this prove it to the rigorous…

I don't think this accomplishes that goal, however. I think this experiment demonstrates that connections and money are a good way to get ahead in life, and if someone is willing to hand that to you on a silver platter, it's a smart choice to take it.

I'm not sure that needed demonstration.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#58

Post by tygorius »

While I think there's something to be said for Wadhwa's point in the context of the engineering field, in the larger context it seems pretty clear we've peaked in an education market bubble. Think about all those kids with liberal arts degrees. Heck, even law schools have seen a sudden drop in applications.

Along those lines, I can't be the only one who was surprised that one of his closing examples was Steve Jobs, the famous Reed College dropout. After all, Jobs has stated the importance of his dropping in to calligraphy classes and how it exposed him to the issues of typography, etc. I don't think I've ever heard Jobs talk about the importance of a visual arts degree from a prestigious university, however.

As for the argument that Microsoft or Apple won't look at applications that don't have degrees, well, yes. But in this forum how often have we read of startups choosing their original teams based on prestigious degrees? If you can make something new and useful, are you really worried about HR liking your resume or are you more concerned with finding ways to make your own company happen?

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#59

Post by kenjackson »

danenania wrote: post #56
kenjackson wrote: post #54

One thing that struck me about this debate is college athletics. In particular basketball and football as athletes in those sports tend to make money from day 1 in college (although the money is made for the college/NCAA). Despite the fact that there are minor league versions for both of these sports, they aren't well regarded. It would seem like minor league basketball is what Thiel is advocating, yet no one is inte…

I think the primary difference between athletics and entrepreneurship is the natural talent/experience equation. In a sport like basketball, a certain level of inborn talent and physical prowess is required. No amount of practice and experience will get you into the pros if you don't have the talent to begin with. There are also strongly diminishing returns for experience because as you get smarter about the game, ph…

But this doesn't answer why aren't the minor leagues a bigger deal? I'd argue that most basketball players, even those that are really strong, feel that college offers two things that the minor/farm leagues don't:

1) The best colleagues. The best US ballers not in the NBA play NCAA ball. Not the NBA farm league. Colleges, from the Ivies to the UCs, are where the best students are. The benefit of going to college is you're around the best CS students AND the best physics, bio, literature, econ, and math students.

2) It's a hedge. While college degrees aren't on the forefront of the minds of college players, especially D1 players, it is something that is in the equation. There is a belief that they can be spotted for the NBA by playing college ball, and if it doesn't work out, they still get a college degree (unless they go to USC).

The only thing that twists this up is athletes get a full ride scholarship. And many here complain that college costs too much. But recall that the best students will have their college paid for them (and in some countries college is free). Cost ends up being inversely proportional to perceived potential (with need factored in too).

This ends up being almost exactly the scenario that Thiel is advocating. Top students get lots of funding. Less good students get a little. Average students get none, and rich students with average potential fund things out of their own pocket. Those who are poor with average potential are just screwed. Welcome to college in 2011.

Re: Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel

#60

Post by keiferski »

eropple wrote: post #49
keiferski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to use my school as an example: In-state tuition is about 14-15k. Room and board is 5-6k. That's easily 20k a year (I paid north of 22k my first year) leading to 80-100k over four years. Not exactly something you can work through on a <$10/hour job (of which I have had many).

Those numbers sound pretty much like mine. They're also pretty meaningless thanks to the incredible opportunities for scholarships at nearly any school you'll care to look at. After scholarships, between family and myself I'll pay around $33,000 at the end of the day (the discrepancy between the aforementioned $25K being the additional housing and other expenses I chose to incur over the most fiscally responsible dec…

Scholarships are pretty hard to come by for an above-average, white, middle class guy.

College isn't as affordable for most as it was for you.

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