Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

Have you watched the TED video on their webpage? Watch that.

Here's a blog from Los Altos which is using Khan Academy for some 5th (and 7th I believe) classes:

http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/

Your generalization applies to just about everyone. Most people don't have higher educations at all. And only a percentage of those get through the classes that weed weaker students out. But are those classes actually teaching or just cutting grades?

Hacker News users aren't exactly a representative sample of the population anyway (generally educated, probably middle class or higher and if not middle class, we probably have above average drive ambition).

Secondly, just because someone passes classes doesn't mean they're educated. I had friends who pumped and dumped for tests and couldn't remember any of it the next semester. Other people learn outside of school and we have no way to measure or give credit for that.

Clayton Christensen talks about the disruption of Harvard Business school in his book -> http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustainin...

You can't compare everyone to an 'elite' anyway. It's statistically unfeasible. We need critical thinkers who have a thirst for knowledge. Some people don't have the latter. Especially people who think they are already educated. Those are things we need in our society and a degree doesn't guarantee that people have them. Although we wish it did.

Well shit, all I can say on the subject is exactly what an originality-challenged dean would say to his class of incoming freshmen (if deans actually addressed classes of incoming freshmen): what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

Want to take advantage of being able to spend four years learning from some of the best minds in every field of human endeavour? Four years set free on hundreds of possible courses, millions of available books, and hundreds of professors willing to answer (well-posed) questions about their work? It's easy to go into a Bachelor's and come out knowing a lot of great stuff.

On the other hand, if you want to put the minimum of energy into getting your Bachelor's degree by picking the easiest subjects and doing the minimum of work to get through them then, yeah, you can come out of the university without knowing much at all. That's partly the university's fault (they really don't flunk nearly enough students nowadays) but mostly your own.

"But", you say, "couldn't I just spend four years in the library and learn all that stuff anyway for slightly less (once opportunity costs are taken into account) money?" And the answer is: probably not. Books + lectures + professors will teach you much better than books alone. The big enemy when learning from books is not the stuff that you don't know, it's the stuff you think you know that's wrong, because you misunderstood something the first time (it happens to all of us, sometimes books are unclear) and never got corrected on it. (This is why you'll find that the internet is full of self-taught physicists who are disproving relativity or thermodynamics because they've misunderstood some aspect of it).

It's telling that many of the folks who are pushing the "we don't need no education" meme are programmers by trade, since programming is one of the very few skills that you can learn effectively on your own by reading books. Why? Because it's easy to know when you're wrong: it'll result in your code not having the desired effect.

Although it can be argued that current higher education is being commoditized, the OP is making an unrealistic comparison to some idealized past where education meant more and people were more educated simply because they went to college. Looking at the recent links on HN about the entrance exam to Harvard et al. in 1900s, I would be very skeptical that the students then learned greater or more applicable skills. Memorizing the philosophies of esoteric 18th century Frenchmen and the intricacies of "noble society" has equally negligible impact on real-life skills.

It is true that education is more commoditized - more people go to college and there is greater opportunity to obtain education - but commoditization by itself does not mean a decrease in quality. Because it is now a commodity, brand name means much more.

Well, not everyone, but I agree with your central point.

An "asset bubble" has certain characteristics, none of which is really present for higher education -- mostly, it's not an asset in any usual sense because I can't flog off my B.Sc. to some eighteen-year-old for a hundred grand. Asset bubbles are marked by prices being driven up by speculation followed by a crash... since there's no speculation there's no bubble.

Now, if instead of asking "is there a higher education bubble" you want to ask the question "Is higher education overpriced" then you might be onto something. It's better to ask a more specific question though, since prices of degrees from different universities vary from nothing to craploads. It's like asking "Are cars overpriced?" without distinguishing between Bugattis and Kias.

Certainly at the high end of the market you're likely to find some overpricing, because that's what always happens at the high end of the market. A Bugatti really doesn't have many practical advantages over a Kia for the average commuter.

So, in conclusion, some people are paying too much for their university degrees and getting lousy value for money, while others are getting the deal of a lifetime. All I can say is do some research, choose wisely, and don't get blinded by the prestige of a big name if you can't afford it.