Is College Worth It?

"We have a bubble in education like we had a bubble in housing in the last decade. Everybody believed that you had to have a house and they'd paid whatever it took, today everybody believes that we have to go to college and people will pay whatever it takes"


     These are the words of billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel as stated in an interview on 60 Minutes. Thiel is a co-founder of PayPal and one of the first investors of Facebook (which if you didn't know became quite successful). He now believes that higher education is at its worst due to college debt topping out at an astonishing 1 trillion dollars, and concludes that a degree in today's job market does not necessarily mark success. Thiel compares college administrators to "Con men" and disagrees with this belief that everyone must go to college no matter what the cost. He even goes on to state that in today's job market,"the average plumber makes just as much as the average doctor". So what does Peter Thiel decide to do with his great fortune? Pay a special group of students $100,000 to drop out.

     The Thiel Fellowship was established in 2011 by Peter Thiel, and its main purpose is to find the great entrepreneurs of the future, but theres just one catch: these students must drop out of college first. Thiel selects these fellows through a selection process where students must pitch him their entrepreneurial ideas in hopes of receiving $100,000 in start up funds. A truly interesting concept that has stirred up much controversy in the field of higher education. Vivek Wadhwa, a successful entrepreneur and professor at both Duke and Stanford university, believes that Thiel is a madman, and to be honest I completely agree. Just because someone has a very bright idea, A. doesn't mean they are ready to develop it without completing college, and B. doesn't make it right to spread this message to the rest of America. Vivek Wadhwa had it right when he stated that, "There might be one Mark Zuckerberg out of a million. But there aren't five Mark Zuckerbergs". Wadhwa is trying to stress that these drop out entrepreneurs that go on to be successful without completing college are so remarkably low that it would be ludicrous to buy into that possibility.


      One of the Fellows from the Thiel Fellowship, Alex Kiselev, stated that, "Of course we're destined to fail. That is what entrepreneurship is... [but] whenever all of our friends are graduating college, I think we'll far more likely to succeed then they will be". The interview transcript can be seen here.
What do you think of the Thiel Fellowship? Is it crazy or does it have merit?
Should it be okay for someone with a bright idea to drop out college?
What kind of message is this sending to Americans?