[abstractbill]

There is no control group. Why not pick 40 very bright young people and give half of them $100K to start a company and the other half $100K to stay in school and complete their education?

That would be a really interesting and exciting experiment. I wish someone would do it.

[alxp]

That wouldn't give you a control group, either, that would give you a new set of students, and would let you answer the question "how successful are students hwo graduate without being crippled by student debt compered with dropouts and a control group of students how received no special assistance and graduated anyway."

I would be very interested in this experiment, but subsidizing a student's education in the US doesn't give you a 'control' group, but a very privileged group.

[slewis]

Would be awesome but it seems hard to implement. Do you randomly choose half and tell them "sorry, no school, you must start a business"? If you let them choose which group they're in instead is the experiment biased? Ideas anyone?

[joebadmo]

I agree that it would be interesting and exciting, but the sample size still seems small to draw any serious conclusions.

[dpatru]

There is a control group: the classes that are now beginning at elite schools. Presumably Thiel's kids would be among them if they were not selected for Thiel's program. To make a proper study, all that needs to be done is to track Thiel's kids and their counterparts, the control, who went to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. How do Thiel's kids compare to Harvard's class at 1 year, 2 years, ...?