[hristov]

The dean of the Stanford engineering school has a very good point. Peter Thiel's dropout scholarhips are very much a rigged experiment.

First he is going to select the brightest kids in the best schools. These kids already have higher than usual chance of success. Then he is going to give them 100k each. That will also increase their chances of success. Then he is going help them with advice and networking as much as he can which will also increase their chances of success.

This is all good and well. I have no problem with Peter Thiel helping a bunch of kids with money advice and networking.

But THEN he is going to say "look, my dropouts succeeded therefore education sucks therefore you are better off dropping out." A lot of kids will drop out when they are not the best in the class, when they do not have the help of Peter Thiel, and they will be fucked.

Thus, as a social experiment Peter Thiel's dropout scholarships are worthless. They do not show anything unless Mr. Thiel creates a control group by investing in kids that do stay in school or investing in kids that just graduated college.

Again this is usually not a problem (not all charity needs to be a social experiment) except for the fact that Peter Thiel obviously wants to use his scholarships as a social experiment. He wants to use them as something to criticize colleges and education with.

Peter Thiel is a very smart person (and ironically also very well educated) so he knows very well this is a rigged experiment. He designed it this way. He has an agenda, and this is to bring out some kind of libertarian utopia to the US. He thinks that academia stands in the way of this political goal and he wants to attack and destroy academia by destroying academic institutions. None of this is a conspiracy theory, he is actually pretty open about all of the above.

And again, I do not have a problem with that in general, any American has a right to be politically active, and to work to bring about what he believes are positive political changes to his/her country.

But again he is using a rigged social experiment in his fight against academia. As bystanders we should be very well aware that this experiment means absolutely nothing and resist his urges to conclude that it means that education is worthless.

[Eliezer]

This is not an experiment. This is challenging the blind assumption of higher education, taking direct aim at the prestige of higher education, and disproving the belief that anyone who can stays in college and that people who drop out are automatically losers. Peter Thiel is saying with his money that he believes that bright, ambitious people are better off staying out of college. Will this prove it to the rigorous standards of science? No. Feel free to donate another $2M if you want to run that experiment your way.

[_delirium]

Do people actually hold that assumption to begin with? There are already plenty of examples of successful dropouts, Bill Gates being one of the more famous. They're talked about in mainstream media relatively frequently, and most Americans know about them. The skepticism is over what the odds are if an average person tries it without connections & assistance, not whether it's possible, especially if it's relatively few kids who are explicitly given money/connections/assistance. I don't see this initiative as doing much to address that particular piece of skepticism.

I don't even oppose Thiel's initiative, I just don't think it has particularly broad implications. If the non-college-attending kids in his program do well, a reasonable conclusion to draw is: if you have someone willing to give you $100k and introduce you to good business connections, in lieu of attending university, then that is quite possibly a good opportunity to take.

If you don't have such an offer, on the other hand...

[ori_b]

I don't think this accomplishes that goal, however. I think this experiment demonstrates that connections and money are a good way to get ahead in life, and if someone is willing to hand that to you on a silver platter, it's a smart choice to take it.

I'm not sure that needed demonstration.

[possibilistic]

I'm sure that with Peter Thiel's money and connections even mediocre students would out perform their peers. Having one or both of these is a significant part of the game.

I personally view this as a publicity stunt. I imagine it cannot be replicated in fields such as mathematics or biochemistry.

It may be fun to watch...

[T-R]

I don't really see how he makes that point, though, by holding up a big carrot and then cherry-picking a few for extra-special treatment. It makes me think "you can be successful if someone throws money at you and gives you special attention", but I'd be tempted to think that those who go for the prize would be less likely to be independently successful than someone who persevered through and finished what they started, in spite of how good dropping out looked.

It'd be a whole lot more meaningful to test an alternative education program - maybe get people learning online or doing apprenticeships, something people could actually do without massive sponsorship - and create a credentialing system that's actually selective and credible, so those people aren't at a disadvantage in the job market. Something like that would actually take aim at the prestige of higher education.

[dpatru]

> Thus, as a social experiment Peter Thiel's dropout scholarships are worthless. They do not show anything unless Mr. Thiel creates a control group by investing in kids that do stay in school or investing in kids that just graduated college.

There already exists a control group: the class of students starting elite schools in 2011. The question Thiel is asking is: What would happen to an exceptional kid who, instead of attending a top-tier college, entered a entrepreneurship program instead?

If it turns out that Thiel's kids are more successful than the average Harvard grad, then Thiel will have demonstrated that, at least for exceptional kids, going to an elite college may not be the best option.

[fjh]

Well, you still have a self-selecting group. Unless he randomly accepts some of the applicants and compares them to the other applicants, it would still be a flawed experiment (assuming he wants it to be a proper experiment, which I don't think is the point).

[eropple]

It may not be the best option...if you have someone with crazy amounts of excellent connections giving you $100,000 and personal mentorship.

Yeah, that's not going to be contested by too many people.

[dpatru]

It's probably reasonable to assume that many of the kids attending Harvard do have access to "crazy amounts of excellent connections", $100,000, and personal mentors. Many of the kids at Harvard come from the richest, most "privileged" class in society. They go to Harvard presumably because they consider that Harvard is their best option. Harvard is not a 2nd choice. Thiel is out to demonstrate that, for this class of people, Harvard may not be the best option.

[lanstein]

Hi, Ed. Small world indeed.

[quanticle]

The only problem is that the kids who are excluded from Mr. Thiel's group aren't being treated the same. No one is showering them with a hundred grand of startup capital and advice from the best in the business. They're out there on their own. Maybe they get help from their parents, but that's hardly the same level of assistance as a $100k grant and advice from industry leaders.

[smokeyj]

This experiment doesn't prove that education is worthless, but that there's other ways to gain it. Personally, I could do without the tuition fees and snobby tenured professors preaching the State's religion.

[shadowfox]

> Personally, I could do without the tuition fees and snobby tenured professors preaching the State's religion.

What do you mean by state's religion?

[Cushman]

I was a gifted student who dropped out of high school to go to college early. I was awarded scholarships totaling around $70,000 and borrowed roughly the same amount of money to attend one of the ludicrously expensive private colleges you hear so much about.

Now, I loved college, and it certainly did a lot for me. But would I be better off today if someone had offered me the same money on the same terms to start my own business? Almost certainly.

[dusklight]

I think it is important to point out .. Thiel is not against education.

He is against the existing institutionalized education system that we have.

If anything he is a huge supporter of education, trying to find a new, more efficient way to do it than the current bureaucratic mess we have right now.