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

#41

Post by tcgore » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:01 PM UTC

I tend to agree that there is an education bubble, just not in engineering or the sciences.

Any English or history major has access to the same loans that an engineering or biology major has, but on average, they are likely to make far less in income. Should what you are studying be a factor in loan applications? I think so.

Another side of the same coin on income inequality (pure numbers, not social justice) is that most universities (that I am aware of) charge the same for all degrees, regardless of earning potential. Someone majoring in elementary education will almost always have a smaller return on investment than an engineering major.

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

#42

Post by triviatise » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

The core issue is that a university education is necessary for a majority of people. It is a generalist education that fails to prepare people for any aspect of the work force. Most people should be going to vocational schools that in 1-2 years prepare them to be a novice in that field. Universities have done a great job of brainwashing to convince everyone that being a CS major at a third tier school is better than going to a 1-2 year software vocational program and starting to learn to program on the job right away(which hardly exist anyway).

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

#43

Post by Goladus » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

This article generally makes better points than Lacy's original, especially Jim Plummer's comments, but ultimately still doesn't do much more than fan the flames of the controversy.

Conveniently, perceived controversy is the part that benefits Techcrunch the most.

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

#44

Post by grav1tas » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:05 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…

Your suggestion that the deans are pro-college institution because they are deans doesn't necessarily follow. It actually is an ad hominem against the deans because you're trying to weaken the author's point by reducing the weight of a series of supporting claims made by the deans because you claim that the deans are acting out of self-interest (or interest of some educational-industrial complex of which they are a part) when they wrote these statements. Given that one side of this argument likes to frame the educational institution as bad (and sometimes go as far as saying the people in the institution are actively working to further its negative ends), it would be reasonable to interpret your first remarks as an ad hominem attack.

That said, your initial statement doesn't necessarily follow because it could also be the case that the deans became deans because they earnestly believe in the system they're helping to further, and that's why they became deans. Claiming the possibility of bias doesn't entail the presence of bias.

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

#45

Post by grav1tas » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

Perhaps Peter Thiel's real master plan is to increase the value of an education by convincing a lot of people that they shouldn't go to school, and thus increasing scarcity of those getting degrees. AmIright?

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

#46

Post by usaar333 » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:11 PM UTC

dr_ wrote: post #28

I agree that a college education is undoubtedly important, especially in certain fields such as engineering, but these deans don't seem to pay any importance to the cost of education. It's going up at an unsustainable rate. If an undergrad education at any great school, Ivy league/Stanford or not, were about 40-50K for 4 years, then I doubt even Peter Thiel would argue against it (although I don't know for sure). But…

A public school is about 40k to 50k over 4 years, before living expenses. In CS, internship salaries are large enough to break-even over 4 years.

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

#47

Post by jff » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #40

jff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but if you weren't too cool for school back in your high school days, you ought to be able to go very cheaply. In HS, I applied myself enough to get a good GPA; yes, like many people here I found it dull, but rather than just skipping classes and not doing homework because I was such a goddamn badass hacker rebel, I did my homework in the 30 minutes before classes started each morning and got something like a 3.9…

As an above-average, middle class student, I got a couple thousand in grants. That's it. Unless you're exceptionally bright, poor, or unique, it isn't affordable. The vast majority of kids (read: average, middle class folks) get stuck paying 85% of the bill.

A couple thousand in grants would have paid half your yearly bill at CWU. Besides, if you get a decent job, it should not take that long to pay off $20k of student loans.

I ended up going to a private school with tuition of around $30k/year. I got $16k/year in merit-based scholarships based solely on my work in HS... as a white, middle-class male. So I got stuck with 50% of the bill; my parents were kind enough to help with half of that. School-mandated co-op jobs (total of 1 year of them, in my case) definitely helped with the rest--that's part of the trade-off. By going to a well-known but more expensive school, I probably had an easier time getting good internships, which in turn helped pay off the higher tuition.

I think university is entirely worth it if you can realistically afford it. I met amazing people, learned some very interesting things that I would not have been exposed to if I were self-taught (Mentor Graphics software licenses are not cheap), and yes, got a piece of paper that says I hung around a certain school long enough to be given a Masters degree. I've got about $30k in debt. It's doable.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:26 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.

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by eropple » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:29 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #39

eropple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. Can you work? Can you hustle? There's a lot of free money there if you're willing to get it: I will have paid, all told, less than $25,000 for my education, excluding housing because I elected to spend more than really necessary, via scholarships. A lot of the rest was paid for by working during school--I had the lame little jobs during school, but I also participated in Google Summer of Code and had a prett…

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 decisions).

I left school with $9,800 in debt. Most of the amount paid off before graduation (at least 60%) was mine, the rest my parents'.

No, you can't work through it on a sub-$10/hour job. But I had those jobs, too: they were beer and social money. I set up my own consulting company and I did GSoC and made more than enough to put myself in a really good position coming out of school.

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

#50

Post by _delirium » Tue, Apr 12, 2011, 9:32 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…

Do people actually hold that assumption to begin with? There are already plenty of examples of successful dropouts, Bill Gates being one of the more famous. They're talked about in mainstream media relatively frequently, and most Americans know about them. The skepticism is over what the odds are if an average person tries it without connections & assistance, not whether it's possible, especially if it's relatively few kids who are explicitly given money/connections/assistance. I don't see this initiative as doing much to address that particular piece of skepticism.

I don't even oppose Thiel's initiative, I just don't think it has particularly broad implications. If the non-college-attending kids in his program do well, a reasonable conclusion to draw is: if you have someone willing to give you $100k and introduce you to good business connections, in lieu of attending university, then that is quite possibly a good opportunity to take.

If you don't have such an offer, on the other hand...