That message, should an average American (not a Thiel fellow) take it to heart, is demonstrably and empirically not in their self interest. Period.

Thiel Fellows are some of the brightest of the bright; of course not attending college won't hurt them in the long run. And accepting a prestigious fellowship will certainly help, at the very least in the short run. So the fellowship makes a lot of sense, and no one claims fellows were hurt just because they return to academia.

However, the fact that 1/2 of recipients of a very prestigious award (and the associated money/opportunity) decided it was in their best interest to return to university is important. It's important because it cast a pretty serious shadow on Thiel's view of college as unnecessary (or over-rated or not in most people's interest... however you want to hedge his claim.)

So while Thiel fellows aren't hurt per se, anyone else listening to the "don't go to college" advice can consider this a rude wake-up call.

So. That's why it matters.

BTW: recently talked with a HS student who got into Harvard (low income, so full ride), but some startup guy was pressuring him to not go to college and instead take a dev job paying $40k. I consider these sort of people scum. I don't know if they are assuaging their insecurities or what, but I don't know how you can look a youth in the eye and tell them to get a day job making web apps (for someone else) instead of going to Harvard for free for four years. Especially when the free tuition alone costs more than the offered salary. Scum.

But after hearing him speak at length about his ideas in person my impression is that he feels college as it currently exists is not serving people that well, and he's frustrated by the lack of viable alternatives as much as anything else, so he's attempting to establish alternative career paths by subsidizing people who are willing to blaze new trails. Likewise I realized that his economically libertarian views are not so much a position of 'don't regulate' as a wish for a flatter and more responsive regulatory system.

College is still a good financial proposition in terms of having a net positive effect on lifetime earnings, but it has become commoditized in some very unhealthy ways that don't serve the public or students well. I thought MOOCs might be an answer to this but they;re not quite there yet, raw knowledge acquisition is only part of the equation.

Popularizing a myth that skipping out on college is a rational self-interested choice for most actors is ethically dubious, especially when the people you're convincing are kids (who you aren't simultaneously handing 100k to). I think it's fair to say that the effect of rhetoric counts as much as intent.

Any deeper argument about the structure of US higher education is really beside the point.

edit: removed some thoughts about the matter that's beside the point.

A better experiment would be something similar to the movie "Trading Places" where they pluck disadvantaged youths from the ghetto, trailer park, or whatever. Send them through a mentorship program or real internship and see if they can become productive citizens. I believe Xavier Neal is on the right track with his School 42.

Wow, just wow.

Where did you get that from? The quotations and paraphrases from the article don't indicate any real decision to me. Just people (wisely) keeping their options open.

About 1/2 are returning to college: (However, the fact that 1/2 of recipients of a very prestigious award (and the associated money/opportunity)).

No one is forcing them: (decided)

Presumably they made the choice by deciding it would benefit them to do so (because it keeps their options open, maybe, and maybe other reasons as well): (it was in their best interest to return to university).

I don't see the flaw is reasoning here. Help?

"...said at one point or another in our conversation that they’d consider going back to college after they are done..."

"On top of that, some of the kids I spoke to from the previous year also said they would go back or at least might consider it at the end of their two years"

Those are the author paraphrasing the students. They don't back up the claim that half are returning to college, or that they even plan to -- the students are just keeping their options open.

If I missed a more clear quotation supporting the claim, let me know.

The author says "half of them admitting they plan to go back at a later date", but that seems to be based entirely on his interpretation. It seems clear the author is not in favor of Thiel's program, so I am not taking his interpretation for granted.

If 1/2 are planning to go back at a later date, that means they've decided attending college is in their best interest. Which was my claim; I didn't say they are currently attending.

I guess it ultimately boils down to whether you trust the author's reporting; I typically assume everyone takes the article's contents as granted unless they've explicitly stated otherwise.

But in any case, "keep your options open" is not exactly the message touted by the Thiel et al PR campaign surrounding the fellowship program.

I still see no evidence of this. The statements provided do not indicate a plan to return.

"But in any case, "keep your options open" is not exactly the message touted by the Thiel et al PR campaign surrounding the fellowship program."

Fair enough.

I don't consider the CTO a scum for making a ridiculous offer, but I would consider the student an idiot if he accepted. An 18 year old Harvard kid should be smart enough to not make major errors like this.

When Bill Gates and Zuckerberg left Harvard, it was already clear that their companies would be successful. At that point their opportunity cost of staying in school was massive. Most of us will never have this high quality problem however, so don't follow in their footsteps if you're not in a comparable situation.

High academic performance doesn't necessarily indicate good judgement or emotional well-being.

Five to ten years later, that same kid will probably look back at his 18-year-old self and reflect on how he has matured since, just like most people do.

It's the pressure that bothered me.

The offer is also kind-of scummy even without pressure, though. High school kids are still kids, even the really smart ones. Role models matter a lot. Also, and this is pure conjecture, I imagine it's harder to walk away from the cash when you're coming out a low-income background, even if it's the completely rational self-interested thing to do.

So far so good...

> 6 of the Thiel Fellows have gone back to college so far [out of 80]

So far so reasonable...

> half of them admitting they plan to go back at a later date.

What the... I don't even... My god... facepalm

From your comment (emphasis mine):

> the fact that 1/2 of recipients

Fact? Not even.

This is consistent with the author's statement that "half of them admitting they plan to go back at a later date". Just because you're not currently in college doesn't mean they've not decided returning is in their best interest.

I just assumed the author of the article was reporting facts. there's no way to no either way, so I'm not sure there's much value in speculating.

There is value in speculating, because I've been proven correct. The author has retracted her previous statement. If you look at the article again, you'll notice that the article has been changed to remove the specific assertion that more than half are thinking about going back to college:

It now says:

>And yet, here these kids are dropping out... at least for two years, with a good lot of them admitting they plan to go back at a later date..

might I suggest you re-read the MIT class startup notes..you might find some of your assumptions changing

Frankly, I don't give a damn.

What matters to me is that kids make decisions about their lives for the right reasons and with all the available information. And I like to think that Thiel, on an individual basis, wants the exact same thing. Which is why, I imagine at least, he's perfectly okay with these fellows returning to university.

But I think Thiel's (and other's) "don't need college" PR is unproductive in this respect. The nuance of the actual positions is irrelevant when that's not what is (very intentionally) communicated.

The odds were greatly against it working out favorably in my circumstances (I went to a tier 3 school, didn't get my startup funded, etc) and I had to possess serious hustle and grit to make it to where I am. I see people who simply studied hard, followed a plan, and graduated from an Ivy or similar college coasting by much easier - that's the path I would take if I could do it over again.

Because Peter Thiel was a big influence on my decision 4-5 years ago to drop out, I look back in hindsight on my experience and think he is wrong to advocate a path he didn't take. He went to Stanford, then got a JD, worked at a hedge fund (try getting that job as a college dropout), and then became a monstrous success at PayPal & Founders Fund after building credibility & success. To think he could have replicated his career path as a college dropout is incredulous. The odds are 10x more against you, and many more doors are closed than open (finance, grad school, etc).

If you want to be successful there is a very easy path if you're mature enough to work hard during high school: goto the best school you can, study a science, engineering, or finance major, and you will have >50% chance of becoming rich enough to live comfortably and retire if you continue to work hard and hustle after you graduate.

I don't know a single Millenial who hasn't struggled with reality post-graduation. (Actually, that's not quite true, I know a couple Googlers who got in straight out of school. They're a minority, though.)

Personally, I think that the biggest advantage a person can have today is to consider rejection Somebody Else's Problem. The people who can get rejected over and over again and still bounce back to full energy immediately tend to succeed no matter where or whether they went to college and no matter what they try.

My personal experience is full of rejection, stress, and closed doors (I still can't go to grad school to get a higher paying job such as an MBA or Law Degree in my 30's, and finishing my bachelors has a huge opportunity cost).

Compare that to liberal arts students at Ivy League colleges who a few years ago were getting handed $100 bills to attend a 1 hour on-campus recruitment session with the hedge fund Bridgewater. That path for capable people seems much better to me than what I had to go through.

If you're a smart, talented young person, I advocate studying hard and going to a top college rather than dropping out. You might just end up becoming a billionaire and paying people to skip college as part of a personal experiment :)

I suspect that college does help skew peoples reactions toward you favorably, but that the ability to hustle ultimately matters more to your long-term success. Then the question is whether having that lifetime skew effect is worth the $100K+ and 4 years of opportunity cost. My personal feeling is that it probably is if a.) you get into an Ivy League or "brand name" college or b.) you come from a lower-class background and your parents don't have a network or much cultural capital. But for most middle-class kids going to a second-tier college, the opportunities it opens up are mediocre, and you are far better off putting the $100K+ and 4 years to work distinguishing yourself in some other way.

I bet a some of them are in or finishing up graduate school, pursuing a subject that they're interested in though. Plenty of smart and well-adjusted people I know from undergrad make less than me, but for some of them - tbh, I'd switch places with them in a heartbeat for personal, job security and job satisfaction reasons.

I used to laugh secretly at my liberal arts peeps at Wesleyan (a worse liberal arts college) when we just graduated 6 years ago. But now peeps are pushing out their films in film festival, post-doc research at conferences and published novel tours and still relatively poor; but I'm quite envious of people taking creative control of their destiny and shipping something, which IMHO more important than the dollar figure. But ironically, it took me making six figures the confidence of reaching a certain "threshold" and the disillusionment of that "threshold" to realize this.

> a couple Googlers who got in straight out of school. They're a minority

Yes. I bet most of them are graduates of top US engineering schools whom arguably have had a very sheltered experience (but probably still less sheltered than Amherst or Wes tho). They for sure got a head start compared to everyone else in "personal finance." But tbh, like you say, dealing with personal difficulties is actually a blessing in disguise and an important phase in your life to know to keep going and going esp. when the going is tough. In some ways, I think the jury is still out for your Googler youn'g vs. the battered Amherst post-grad's toughing it out. I'd give it another 25 years when everyone's in their 40's, 50's to make the judgement.

It should be pretty obvious that your classmates' experiences aren't at all representative of what engineering/finance majors go through.

They've been very open that for some projects, academia is a good place to be.

"The fellowship is intended for students under the age of 20 and offers them a total of $100,000 over two years as well as guidance and other resources to drop out of school" - Wikipedia

"Everybody believes that you need to go to college... the average plumber makes as much as the average doctor." - Peter Thiel in video interview: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/billionaire-offers-college-alter...

If the Thiel Fellowship isn't about convincing kids to drop out of college and not go back, someone should tell Peter Thiel and the person that runs the website. :-)

Glad to hear the fellowship is working out great for you, though! I'm not a big fan of college myself.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/plumber/salary http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/physician/salary

Once that's factored in, the doctor still has higher lifetime earnings, but not nearly the 4x you're pointing at. More like 1.8x.

And it's not until about age 40 that the doctor breaks even relative to the plumber.

And the doctor can only pull all that off in the first place with access to about $500,000 in credit.

Does it get very stressful feeling like you have to live up to everybody's expectations?

I find I learn best by reading books and talking with smart people, both of which can be done outside an academic setting, so I've decided not to go to college.

Being forced to look beyond one's bubble is extremely rewarding. Being forced to tackle trying tomes of knowledge that test the will may be the only chance one can have to learn on certain topics.

The whole “skip university” trope is a sad meme to push were it only for these reasons.

It is sadder still when one performs a reducto ad absurdun where the sole metric is formal education as monetary gain.

Where would our culture be without music, literature, philosophy, and art? Is there value in studying these worlds beyond monetary gain?

What sort of an elevated impact might the brilliant minds around HN offer with a diverse and eclectic formal education?

My sisters went to decent liberal arts universities and, through observation, believe theirs to much more worthwhile. Of course each person is different, so others may not have had as worthless of an experience as I did.

Point being that (although I can't back this up) I'm pretty sure no university is better than 50%+ of universities out there, and so the endless expectation bias is often harmful.

Notice their justification begins with "I find I learn best...". Sounds like perhaps the best way to justify a decision about one's education.

As for breadth, it's true. College makes accumulating these experiences very easily. Luckily, there are lots of smart people out there for anyone who might want to broaden their horizons while not attending college. In fact, part of the point of college is realizing this is true and figuring out how to benefit from these opportunities.

How do you know how you "learn best" as a 16-19 year old who has never even been to college?

I think I understood how I learn best by the time I was in middle school or so. Hasn't changed much since then.

I mean, the OP said he learns best being surrounded by books and smart people; that's college in a nutshell. You're unlikely to ever find a better library.

I, too, had a good idea of my learning style and aptitude going into college. It has not changed all that much since.

What did change was my ability to use that learning style to link together fields, knowledge, information, and people that appear extremely complex and disparate on their own.

The world needs specialists, for sure, and perhaps you can level up your knowledge in the field of your interest by using books and web research. That's valuable.

If you really want to be valuable, do what no one else seems to be able to do right now: put everything together. Everything. Not just different parts of your own field, but throw chemistry and poetry and literature in there. How about music? How does that affect your work? What about history and philosophy or shoot, most importantly, psychology? How will you not only create great products, but also know how they affect people, and exactly what ways other people will think about them? How will you discover what people really need if you don't understand them on a basic level?

What about theology and philosophy? If you just rejected the possibility of their importance to your work, then you're not the kind of person I want to work with. Rejection of knowledge is already failure.

College, above all, gives you breadth and the tools to deal with it. Use that and you'll be ten times more valuable than even the best specialist.

Can you get that elsewhere? Maybe. Does everyone need it? Probably not. But I've never seen anything that kicks you out of your own head more swiftly or effectively than a good university—and that alone makes you better in my book.

What I didn't know how to do was put my nose to the grindstone and rigorously study one subject in depth until I learned all the dusty corners. I was very good at impressing people with off-the-wall connections and intuitions that they would never have dreamed of, but I couldn't finish my homework or solve textbook problems. I did learn that in college (but in an unorthodox way - by nearly flunking out).

But I can't help but wonder if this is a maturity thing and it would've happened without college. I actually felt that the greatest improvement in my ability to persevere and get through the boring things that weren't immediately obvious happened in the 5 years after college, once I got into the working world.

Most of their life studying? How much relevant experience do you think one obtains in years 0 to 16? Up to that point school is a complete and utter joke, especially if you're even modestly intelligent.

A 16-19 year old, no matter how intelligent, doesn't have much wisdom.

I couldn't help but be reminded by the Good Will Hunting scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBjWHfBHKos

The young folks who really need the encouragement and permission to take a path that doesn't involve a four year university are those who aren't prepared intellectually or socially and those whose aptitudes and interests point to vocational training.

In my opinion the Thiel Fellowship program is a poor vehicle for questioning the necessity of a university education and calling attention to the higher education bubble. Unless the program starts serving future plumbers and electricians instead of future engineers and doctors, it has no business being promoted as such a vehicle.

Would more money solve that problem? If 100k is legitimately not enough to "advance professional interests", then what about 200k? 500k? 1M?

Also, consider the subset of them wanting to do a biotech startup, where everyone pitching must be a PhD (reality isn't this bad)--- $100k of pre-vet is probably not enough to make up for the lack of credentials to flash around to raise money to do the more costly biotech ventures.

Sexism, invisible privilege, and other forms of uneducated myopia stand as obvious examples. Interesting technological / sociological solutions to hidden issues possibly another.

Did anyone else go to college with that person that seemed a little older, seemed to know how to better apply what they were learning, and asked the questions that suggested they had an advanced understanding?

I did. These were guys/gals who got jobs right out of high school and were now getting their degrees. And they spanked the typical undergrads.

So, is article this telling me that this is the worst case from the Thiel Fellows? OK. Great. Next.

I think this is the important bit.

You get the experience of doing something uncommon, the benefit of being with like-minded individuals pursuing their own ideas and dreams... with the benefit of going back to school if you wish, a couple of years older if you want, but with much more real-world experience (to a degree) than those same 2 years spent only at college.

I think the real difference will be made by those that go back to school actually. Not by virtue of spending those 2 years at the Mission house, but by virtue of going back to school, learning whatever skills are necessary to then go produce something taking advantage of both worlds.

Perhaps that will change the public perception, but it says absolutely nothing about the actual value of the program. It's a selective group of high-achieving teens, of course some small subset will go on to experience amazing success.

Harvard could lay off its entire faculty and sell its campus, but as long as admissions stayed the same Harvard acceptees would continue to accomplish amazing things.

Seriously how does this prove the program is a failure? Because some people want to go to school and others want to do stuff right out of the gate.

This is link bait, pure and simple and it looks like it's working almost as well as declaring some random computer language dead or another one the winner.

If each fellow had to pay $150-250k for college, I bet not a single Fellow would entertain the idea of going to college.

Personally, I took a gap year before college but eventually decided to return to college afterwards, knowing that I would be able to get a $100+k dev salary in the Bay Area if I chose to forgo college. Part of that decision was driven by the fact that my parents would pay for college (and then some).

On a broader note, taking just one year off gave me a ton of perspective on what I wanted to do in life, my priorities, and on the value of college. Everyone should take time off.

The only hard numbers are that 40 completed the program, 40 are enrolled now, and 6 total went back to school. Doesn't sound like half to me, though of course it could work out that way eventually.

Ask anyone what they plan on doing after X which is 2+ years down the road and you are likely to get a BS answer.

They have shown they are willing to a) make a plan and b) take a detour when an opportunity pops up.

They will follow opportunity until all that's left is the plan. They can't predict what they will do. Admitting they will return to school means nothing.

Personally, I'm guessing once they get on this path they will embark on one opportunity after another. Returning to school will likely never appear as an "opportunity" and they won't go back.

Though some of these teens have already had entrepreneurial experiences, they have yet to break the cycle of school.

Which TechCrunch turned into the headline: "Is The Thiel Fellowship Program Really Just A Sabbatical From College?"

Which the HN submission turned into: "More than half the Thiel Fellows plan on returning to school"

Which looks flagrantly untruthful to me, both because "would consider"!="plan on" and "8 of the 20"!="more than half". So, flagged. Could a moderator please edit this headline to be more honest?

Many instructors say more experienced students are more focused than those that enter college right away. That will factor in as well. There are no simple answers to this question, except that pushing everybody to do things one particular way is probably unjustified.

If the paint is smelling acrid, they should get out ;)

The more interesting question is, what are the 50% who don't want to go back doing now? Those are the ones whose circumstances would tell us something meaningful about how well the Thiel thing is working.