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

It's probably reasonable to assume that many of the kids attending Harvard do have access to "crazy amounts of excellent connections", $100,000, and personal mentors. Many of the kids at Harvard come from the richest, most "privileged" class in society. They go to Harvard presumably because they consider that Harvard is their best option. Harvard is not a 2nd choice. Thiel is out to demonstrate that, for this class of people, Harvard may not be the best option.

The problems with higher education don’t solely rest on the universities; the consumers are equally to blame. I’m sick of people talking about going in dept 200k to get a bachelors degree. If you paid 40k or even 15k a year on liberal arts you’re a fool who deserves to be saddled with dept. Honestly, the liberal arts education the average student gets pales in comparison to what an intellectually curious person would get by visiting the library regularly, searching the web, and watching documentaries. There are plenty of ways people can drastically reduce the cost of education such as testing out of classes, going to community college (hell a reasonably ambitious student can take college classes in high school), etc. As for the meat of your bachelor’s degree, well that’s where university choice comes in.

Perspective students need to research colleges more. A lot of kids think that just because they did well in school and were told they were smart their whole life that they have to go to an Ivy League school or some other very expensive prestigious school. There are many universities that offer an as good or better education for a much better value. Sure Harvard may employ people who are titans in their field, Nobel Prize winners and the like, but unless you are going to Grad school there it won’t affect you any. They won’t be teaching you, TAs will. And even if they did, they would be teaching you out of the same text books as the adjunct professors at your local community college uses. Do people think that if they go to undergrad at Princeton a Nobel Prize winning professor will personally mentor them or something?

I’m currently a senior taking a break from cramming for finals, and when I graduate I will graduate with a degree from a school that has high job placement in my field (CS) and that I feel has prepared me very well. And I will do it without going in to dept at all. Not a dime. I’m going to be able to do this because I went to community college for my liberal arts, tested out of classes, lived off campus, worked part time, took advantage of transfer scholarships for high GPA, grants, tax rebates, etc. In short I PLANNED things out and worked hard in all aspects of my life not just school. I know countless students who will be graduating with ridiculous debts because they didn’t plan at all. They got out of high school and just hopped in to college never thinking about the dept for a minute. What’s really sad is that many of them will have degrees that aren’t worth shit unless they go to grad school, or they will get jobs that pay horribly for the amount of initial investment. I’m not as pessimistic about higher education as a lot of people on here, but I definitely have my issues with it. I just think that people are diverting a lot of the blame from the students/parents/mentors to the colleges.

If Thiel's actions cause smart students to drop out of school and fail at starting their own companies, that will be great because then the companies that hire the failed dropouts will have to develop non-school-related methods for discriminating between the good ones and the bad ones. If those non-school-related methods become good enough, they'll start using them on graduates as well, and then there will be actual pressure on schools to educate students effectively (along with the option of teaching yourself instead of going to school if that fits your style better).

>Of course, the other reason one should not take Peter >Thiel’s advice is that the value of education is >intrinsic and an end in itself rather than something >to be measured by its career financial return.  It is >during one’s undergraduate years that one discovers >oneself, where one fits into the world and what it >means to be human.

Sorry, but I just don't believe I need to go to a university to find out "how I fit into the world and what it means to be human." Isn't going out and actually building something useful for the world also a way to find your place?

A university education certainly has value, and may help you find "what it means to be human", but can the author really assert that it's the only or even the best way?

Hi, Ed. Small world indeed.