[dr_]

I agree that a college education is undoubtedly important, especially in certain fields such as engineering, but these deans don't seem to pay any importance to the cost of education. It's going up at an unsustainable rate. If an undergrad education at any great school, Ivy league/Stanford or not, were about 40-50K for 4 years, then I doubt even Peter Thiel would argue against it (although I don't know for sure). But the problem is that the cost of attending such a university are growing at a staggering pace, whereas the cost of starting a software/internet based business in the same time frame has actually been going down at a staggering pace. The risk of failure may remain high, but the costs of failure keep getting lower, so you can't blame students for at least asking the question whether or not they should drop out. Sure you may argue there is an opportunity cost associated with leaving a university - but that keeps decreasing as the costs of attending that university increase. What happens when a 4 year education is $400,000?

[usaar333]

A public school is about 40k to 50k over 4 years, before living expenses. In CS, internship salaries are large enough to break-even over 4 years.