Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The New "Don't Go To College" Scholarship

Don't go to college, do get $100,000

The winners were announced today for a new fellowship that has sparked heated debate in academic circles for questioning the value of higher education and suggesting that some entrepreneurial students may be better off leaving college.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, will pay each of the 24 winners of his Thiel Fellowship $100,000 not to attend college for two years and to develop business ideas instead.

The fellows, all 20 years old or younger, will leave institutions including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, to work with a network of more than 100 Silicon Valley mentors and further develop their ideas in areas such as biotechnology, education, and energy.

More than 400 people applied for the fellowship, and 45 of them were flown out to San Francisco in late March to present their ideas to Thiel's foundation and the network of Silicon Valley mentors.

3 comments:

Les Cargill said...

Given what people go through to go to Stanford, MIT or Harvard, I am surprised anybody actually applied for the fellowship. I actually know people who have said "If (s)he doesn't get into the right preschool, (s)he'll never get into a good school."

Richard Stands said...

Not to mention getting into the right school of spermatozoa.

Anonymous said...

Les, that's exactly what you get when you have overpopulation and a meat grinder economy ... go check out other success stories such as India.