Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by eropple » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:28 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #60

eropple wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am a white, middle-class guy. I don't know if I'm above-average or not, but I busted my ass to get ahead.

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

#62

Post by dlo » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:31 PM UTC

cjy wrote: post #34

timr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course engineering school deans are going to think dropping out is a bad idea." This is an ad hominem , dressed up nicely. And from the article that I just read (maybe we're being A/B tested for ideology?), nearly all of the deans made clear exceptions for exceptional students. What a bunch of higher-education zealots. You also got the "arguments" wrong. All of them. None of the deans made an argument for greater…

The first quote wasn't an ad hominem attack because it wasn't directed at the engineering deans, but rather at the author. If you're trying to determine whether people should drop out of school why would you only survey deans to make a point? Moreover, it is perfectly valid to note the conflict of interest a speaker may have. Their incentives don't make their arguments wrong, but it should give us caution before maki…

"Notice that none of the deans said stay in school because of the things you'll learn in the classroom."

The second-to-last paragraph of Jim Plummer's response seems to say so. Example: "A university education gives the large majority the tools to become innovators and entrepreneurs throughout their lives." He then goes onto extol the benefits of an engineering education even for careers outside engineering.

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

#63

Post by T-R » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:31 PM UTC

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 really see how he makes that point, though, by holding up a big carrot and then cherry-picking a few for extra-special treatment. It makes me think "you can be successful if someone throws money at you and gives you special attention", but I'd be tempted to think that those who go for the prize would be less likely to be independently successful than someone who persevered through and finished what they started, in spite of how good dropping out looked.

It'd be a whole lot more meaningful to test an alternative education program - maybe get people learning online or doing apprenticeships, something people could actually do without massive sponsorship - and create a credentialing system that's actually selective and credible, so those people aren't at a disadvantage in the job market. Something like that would actually take aim at the prestige of higher education.

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

#64

Post by keiferski » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:41 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #61

keiferski wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am a white, middle-class guy. I don't know if I'm above-average or not, but I busted my ass to get ahead.

I don't doubt it. I'm just saying that for your average person, college isn't cheap. It's cool that you made it work, but for the majority of the population, college isn't an affordable option.

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

#65

Post by dpatru » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:46 PM UTC

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…

> Thus, as a social experiment Peter Thiel's dropout scholarships are worthless. They do not show anything unless Mr. Thiel creates a control group by investing in kids that do stay in school or investing in kids that just graduated college.

There already exists a control group: the class of students starting elite schools in 2011. The question Thiel is asking is: What would happen to an exceptional kid who, instead of attending a top-tier college, entered a entrepreneurship program instead?

If it turns out that Thiel's kids are more successful than the average Harvard grad, then Thiel will have demonstrated that, at least for exceptional kids, going to an elite college may not be the best option.

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

#66

Post by eropple » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:47 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #64

eropple wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a white, middle-class guy. I don't know if I'm above-average or not, but I busted my ass to get ahead.

I don't doubt it. I'm just saying that for your average person, college isn't cheap. It's cool that you made it work, but for the majority of the population, college isn't an affordable option.

I don't think you'll find many people who'd say that college is right for everyone, or affordable for everyone. (I would say that, for any given person, if they're driven and dedicated, it's probably affordable. But that excludes a lot of the population.)

I would, however, say that the majority of people in the startup world who seem to have a clue have had some college at the least, and that it's very valuable in and of itself for those people--which makes me think Thiel very misguided.

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

#67

Post by dpatru » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

abstractbill wrote: post #3

There is no control group. Why not pick 40 very bright young people and give half of them $100K to start a company and the other half $100K to stay in school and complete their education? That would be a really interesting and exciting experiment. I wish someone would do it.

There is a control group: the classes that are now beginning at elite schools. Presumably Thiel's kids would be among them if they were not selected for Thiel's program. To make a proper study, all that needs to be done is to track Thiel's kids and their counterparts, the control, who went to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. How do Thiel's kids compare to Harvard's class at 1 year, 2 years, ...?

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

#68

Post by eropple » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 10:55 PM UTC

dpatru wrote: post #65

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…

> Thus, as a social experiment Peter Thiel's dropout scholarships are worthless. They do not show anything unless Mr. Thiel creates a control group by investing in kids that do stay in school or investing in kids that just graduated college. There already exists a control group: the class of students starting elite schools in 2011. The question Thiel is asking is: What would happen to an exceptional kid who, instead…

It may not be the best option...if you have someone with crazy amounts of excellent connections giving you $100,000 and personal mentorship.

Yeah, that's not going to be contested by too many people.

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

#69

Post by shadowfox » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 11:00 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #31

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 experiment doesn't prove that education is worthless, but that there's other ways to gain it. Personally, I could do without the tuition fees and snobby tenured professors preaching the State's religion.

> Personally, I could do without the tuition fees and snobby tenured professors preaching the State's religion.

What do you mean by state's religion?

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

#70

Post by byrneseyeview » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 11:06 PM UTC

I'm not sure how surprising it is that academics are defending academia. Plummer's response is sensible--yes, it's a rigged experiment. On the other hand, if you genuinely think college is a bad deal, paying people to go to college is perverse. Thiel isn't so much making a bet as helping people act as if his bet has already paid off.

Katsouleas just makes a lame rhetorical point. Surely he can do better.

Eisenstein speaks the truth: college is not always the best option. "Getting an engineering degree reduces the variance in your career outcomes. You might not get the billions, but you also won’t get into poverty." That's the best way to understand it. In most financial contexts, cutting your variance also reduces your expected outcome--and levering up to buy low-variance assets is a good way to gear yourself for negative outcomes, whether those assets are degrees or CDOs.

Is there any point more boring than noting that two people who finished school a decade or two ago now think that school isn't such a good deal? It would be pretty craven for Thiel and Arrington to believe the things they believe but lie about it because they'd gone to Stanford, so I'm not sure Wadhwa has a point.