My first post on HN =]<p>Let me weight in on what I think are the pros and cons to higher education. (I go to a Canadian University so this is related to my experience in Canada)<p>Pros:<p>Life goals/direction - Growing up, going to university has definitely given me a direction and goal to peruse. How dangerous would it be if the younger generation had no direction, but simply just aspired to be an "entrepreneur"<p>Networks - University has given me access to a huge network of professors, established industry professionals (through events/networking sessions etc), role models and up-and-coming talents<p>Exposure - Exposure in terms of being exposed to different types fields, career options, co-op program is a +<p>Career Opportunity - Whether we like it or not, going to higher education and advertising that you go to a reputable school is a criteria for HR to weed out good candidates from the bad. Just showing that you can get into a better university says something about you.<p>Fundamental thinking/critical thinking skills - While uni has not taught me what I needed to know for my career it definitely has built the foundation.<p>Fun + social experiences<p>Cons:<p>Cost - ridiculous, in a recent convo with my friend he describe it to be a $40,000 party<p>Career learning - not there, I learned more from on-job training, reading blogs and interviewing industry professionals<p>Like-mindedness - esp with the management program, I find that the teaching is based on measuring units, quantifying experiences and not giving people the room to grow as artists. In the marketing field, you can't quantify everything, we are training too many scientist and not enough artists<p>Overall, I can't generalize that without higher education the younger generation will be lost for directions. There is definitely a lot of young talents who are already well developed into the senior years of their high school or even prior. But remember this is a confusing time and chaotic time for us. teens now days have so much more to worry about. Not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur, you have to give the opportunity to the right people. For the rest, it is just like giving wings to Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and be burned.<p>Your thoughts?<p>Lichi
Peter Thiel also wishes women couldn't vote.<p><a href="http://gawker.com/#!5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote" rel="nofollow">http://gawker.com/#!5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-cou...</a>
> <i>"Why doesn't Thiel make it possible for anyone who wants to go to Harvard to be able to do it?" Maneker wonders.</i><p>What makes Harvard Harvard is that <i>not</i> anyone can go there. If everyone could, it would just be a good state school, and that certainly wouldn't pay the bills.<p>What universities don't realize, is that the same force which drove more and more people to attend college at the beginning of the information age, is also tearing down the requirement for college. There is really very little that you can't learn or even experience on your own these days to give yourself a brilliant education.<p>That said, a good college is still far and away the best way to learn classical knowledge quickly. I am very thankful for my CS degree, because there's no way I would have gotten that breadth of exposure to the most interesting parts of CS with 4 years in industry, but with the way tuition is increasing, the cost is squeezing out the benefit for more and more people, masked only by the availability of government loans, and throwing people into a life of indentured servitude.<p>I don't know if Thiel is doing these kids a favor, but it's certainly no worse than the deal they'll get from the establishment. I'm glad he's throwing a wrench in the works regardless of how misguided he may be.
A person under 20 has a far better chance of making $100,000 in professional sports than getting it from the Thiel Foundation. I suspect that for a person under twenty, the odds of getting $100,000 from Thiel are even lower than the odds of winning the same amount in Texas Hold'em.<p>Not to mention that they also have a far better chance of getting an academic scholarship to an elite institution.
I was not aware of Peter Thiel's other opinions when I read this piece, but his arguments that we're in an education bubble seem to me to be very solid.<p>Indeed, there's a lot of evidence he left "on the table". E.g. grade inflation is analogous to the kinds of things we saw surrounding the housing bubble and the internet bubble -- people want the metrics to meet certain criteria and don't care about the underlying fundamentals, so everyone is above average.
I satisfy the following three conditions:<p>* I dropped out of college.<p>* I got kicked out of college.<p>* I graduated college.<p>Why stop at dropping out when you can have it all?