I think it's a really stupid idea to link a grant to dropping out of school. If an idea is worth a $100000 grant, why does it stop being worth that money as soon as someone turns 21 or has a degree?<p>I did drop out of school and I don't regret it. Many dropouts are very successful, many more are not. And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.<p>The odds of some web startup working are non zero. But the odds of doing something more interesting later with that degree are also non zero. Computational biologists can create social picture upload sites as well, even when they're over 20 believe it or not.
It will be interesting to see what comes of these grants.<p>I feel that the companies that were successful when their founders dropped out of school were driven by a founder who believed so intently and was committed to his idea that he was willing to drop out and pursue it despite the lack of incentive to do so. Instead of the alternative where a halfway decent guy who just isn't that happy at school goes off to pursue some startup because someone gave him a decent amount of money which i suspect will end in failure almost all the time.
So basically $100k for some teens to build a bunch of RoR CRUD sites.<p>And
""Our world needs more breakthrough technologies,” said Thiel. "From Facebook to SpaceX to Halcyon Molecular, some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation. "<p>Don't know about the other companies beside Facebook, but it seems that Facebook doesn't belong on that list of "breakthrough technologies"
The funny thing is, I was willing to drop out of school to work at one of those Thiel-network companies (I was interning for the summer, and my team wanted me to stay), but they told me they wouldn't hire me full-time without a degree.<p>I ended up dropping out anyways, but to do something else.
20 is arbitrary, I don't understand why they would choose 20, especially since some of the people mentioned in the article have degrees or started after 20. Also, I'd like to know when they got funded, it seems many of the [other] companies that Thiel has invested in had founders over 20.<p>Elon Musk dropped out at age 24 - started Zip2.<p>Scott Banister started ListBot at age 20.<p>Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 20 dropped out at 20.<p>William Andregg no info.<p>Peter Thiel himself graduated (J.D. from Stanford in 1992)<p>Add info or submit corrections.
This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it.<p>He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool.<p>And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.
I'd rather see a new university which figures out a way to support founders starting startups AND grant them some kind of credential (in case it fails). Unfortunately much of the world is credential-based (especially Asian parents...), so being able to award a degree would make a difference in who could participate. Plus, if someone's startup fails, or he just realizes he'd rather do something other than startups, the credential makes getting a regular job much easier, preserving options. And of course immigration often depends on a degree, and using educational visas to get people into the USA in the first place would be a great hack.<p>I think a 5-6 year program to get a SB in tech entrepreneurship, where 1-2 years are spent doing smaller projects and some regular classes (as applied to those projects), and then 4 years in a co-op program with your startup and students from the first 1-2 years, would be ideal. Maybe even grant a SB/SM in 6-8 years.
I think this is stupid...most founders who dropped out of school..did so only after they got traction, an saw that the business was going somewhere.<p>I'm not sure...but I don't think any of the big name founders(you know those that are always brought up as examples) ever dropped out of school before actually finishing their product...and seeing early traction
Really like this part:<p>"Because education seeks to impart past knowledge, when you are trying to create a technological breakthrough, you have to create new knowledge, and there is no way to teach that. There was no course at University of Arizona on ‘‘how to cure aging.' Hopefully, this program will allow others to work on ambitious projects themselves, before they've taken on a crippling amount of student debt,”