It is stories like these that really put the higher educational system into question. In this article, tech tycoon Peter Thiel has recruited 20 of America’s brightest minds and offered to pay them $100,000 each to do a two year entrepreneurial project and not go to college. Theil is calling the project the “20 under 20” fellowship. These are some of the brightest minds in the world right now and they are deciding not to go to college? What does that say for our system? Who wouldn’t want to forgo the 4-8 years of college and graduate school and start getting paid right away to follow your true passion? Theil, who is touted as an extremely successful investor who graduated from Stanford Law school, is obviously presenting these kids with an extremely unique opportunity. The article doesn’t really quote Thiel specifically on his stance on higher education in America today but he obviously can’t be too upset with the system if he is doing so well himself as a product of the system. Theil is quoted in the article saying "Turning people into debt slaves when they're college students is really not how we end up building a better society." No kidding! The job market for current college graduates is so extremely tough and all of these kids are already in a lot of college debt with no direction or job? I like what Thiel is doing and hope that some other wealthy people in the states can recognize that we need to be making an investment in our future instead of deciding to put them into debt to make their pockets bigger.
Right, so, what is school for? Is there a strong argument for the liberal arts, detached from arguments that higher education is necessary for economic success? Is there a strong enough argument that our democracy and social structure depend on a well-educated, critical-thinking polity? Or do arguments of economic success matter more?
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