Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#51

Post by veyron »

hugh3 wrote: post #47
veyron wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG's stance, at least nowadays, is not to take college students unless they are going to leave anyway. I dont think he would do it in the way that PT is trying to do it. My understanding, having been sucked into that trap myself, is that college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students. If you can give students an o…

college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students Well if that's the only concern, then Thiel could do what rich people have been doing for years -- donating scholarships to give smart kids a free ride to college.

The scholarship process is also broken. With many of the "merit-based" scholarships, there is a bias favoring those coming from low income families (otherwise why would they ask for parents' income information?)

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#52

Post by zasz »

yid wrote: post #49
hugh3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see what does happen. Some of these kids do seem rather smart but incredibly naive (hey, reminds me of me at the age of 19) -- what does happen when Asteroid Mining Kid runs up against cold hard reality? Let me just clag in his whole description: John Burnham believes that the search for new resources has driven exploration, expansion, and innovation—from the discovery of the Americas to the C…

Actually in that position, interning for Elon Musk sounds like a great idea, followed by using that $100k to fund living expenses in college and grad school, with the bonus of having a streamlined academic plan and semi-guaranteed dream job when you graduate.

I have a friend at Stanford who got a $100k fellowship for graduate school, and is interning at Tesla this summer. He's doing the exact same thing as you're proposing Asteroid Miner Kid would do, but through the completely traditional route. Seems like a waste if AMK does the same thing as my brilliant but more conventional friend.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#53

Post by rowaway1 »

hugh3 wrote: post #33
szany wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I hope you're not implying that the point of the Fellowship is to destroy academia.

I don't think Thiel is naive enough to think that anything you can do with twenty people and two million dollars will "destroy" academia, but he does seem to have an agenda and the desire to prove a point. The point, however, is silly. Cherrypick the twenty brightest students you can find, give 'em a bunch of money and all the connections that come from having Peter Thiel invested in your success, and I'm sure that a…

the spread of startup accelerators in the style of y combinator suggests that the entrepreneurship-as-education model is growing. not going to scale to everyone, but that's not the point. the point thiel's making is that entrepreneurs fare well without school, perhaps better, because when they're not in school taking instruction, they're in the world building things. if that's true, what's silly about it? if it's true that we're hampering entrepreneurship by keeping a special breed of human being tied up on class during 4 of their prime years, when we could accelerate entrepreneurship by giving them money to start things, then that's actually quite a profound mistake. so if thiel's project succeeds to the point where more such accelerators pop up, siphoning entrepreneurs out of school to achieve success without a degree, then he's made a profound point.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#54

Post by languagehacker »

None of these really look like compelling business ideas to me. It seems as thought at best, the idea Thiel has is that if some angel out there can fund bright young people, they can develop business understanding and enrich their skills in areas they're interested in to a point where someday they can do great things. But I just don't see those great things being the ventures that they're currently incubating.

Sure, it would be excellent if a billionaire swooped down from the sky and paid me a fortune to learn by doing rather than going to school. But more often than not these days, young people go to school because student loans are easy to acquire. Furthermore, the jobs they're likely to start off with straight out of high school pay about as much as the cost of living portion of student loans taken over the course of a full year. I agree the university system is pretty flawed right now. It doesn't do a good job preparing young people for careers -- particularly in the liberal arts. But I don't think that plying smart kids with money is an effective way to provide a well-rounded foundation for any career path. That pretty much says that so long as you impress someone enough for them to become your patron, you're set for life and there's no expectation that you succeed. And that's the current problem with the university system, too -- all kids pandering to professors, and no actual expectations that what you learn be used in whatever constitutes your career after college. We shouldn't be setting up young people to think that their self worth is derived from impressing people in their minuscule niche, but rather from the satisfaction of their personal accomplishments (as well as the paycheck at the end of the day).

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#55

Post by padmanabhan01 »

hugh3 wrote: post #47
veyron wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG's stance, at least nowadays, is not to take college students unless they are going to leave anyway. I dont think he would do it in the way that PT is trying to do it. My understanding, having been sucked into that trap myself, is that college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students. If you can give students an o…

college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students Well if that's the only concern, then Thiel could do what rich people have been doing for years -- donating scholarships to give smart kids a free ride to college.

Wouldn't that actually be giving free rides to colleges? They are free to charge whatever they want because it's the scholorship that pays for it anyway. Like insurance...

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#56

Post by freshfunk »

Very interesting experiment and I'm curious to see what comes out of it but I motivation for going to college isn't all about making money (which is what starting a business is all about).

Aside from education, College/University changes people in immeasurable ways. Usually it's where you meet friends you have for life, find the person you want to marry, discover your political and philosophical self, explore vastly different parts of your intellect from incredibly smart/talented people (anything from quantum physics to 18th century english literature), and, most importantly, mature.

These are things that you can't put a price on but will stay with you the rest of your life. Of course, one doesn't necessarily need college to mature but it's a great environment to do it in. I can't imagine trying to do that in a corporate environment.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#58

Post by kiba »

_delirium wrote: post #11

I'd be somewhat more interested in a program like this if it were being run by someone I believed actually wanted in good faith to improve education/business, rather than having ulterior political motives. Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason. He also claims that in doing so he'd improve education, but it…

He's dedicated to the cause of eliminating death and aging. That's good enough for me.

In order to eliminate aging and death, you must have an educated and ambitious populace who can mobilize resources to wage war on mortality.

Yes, he's a techno-libertarian, but like all great techno-libertarians he's interested in killing what kill human beings and crystallizing human potential. Aubrey de Grey even mention libertarians as one of the group that is most supportive of his work.

Why libertarianism and anti-aging/anti-death and technology in general goes together? I have no idea.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#60

Post by Apocryphon »

veyron wrote: post #51
hugh3 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students Well if that's the only concern, then Thiel could do what rich people have been doing for years -- donating scholarships to give smart kids a free ride to college.

The scholarship process is also broken. With many of the "merit-based" scholarships, there is a bias favoring those coming from low income families (otherwise why would they ask for parents' income information?)

But kids from low income families are more likely to suffer from student loans.
Post reply on HN