Hacker News Reader

How does 20 Under 20 change education in any way? How will Thiel change the problems behind higher ed by teaching twenty of the brightest teenagers how to become entrepreneurs? What will that prove for the other 99%?

You also completely skip one of the main arguments in favor of a college education. Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society? I don't think there's a YouTube channel with that feature.

Granted, kids shouldn't pay $40k a year to party, but you're declaring victory over lecture halls with a collection of online classes that started a week ago. We're a long way off from fixing education--a couple of YouTube videos and a single co-working space on the West Coast are one in many steps we need to take.

Does Khan Academy also provide an atmosphere where students can study, party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to become members of society?

You know what provides that atmosphere? New York. Or SF. Or Boston, Seattle, Austin--pretty much any city. I did not miss out on those opportunities from dropping out. The difference was that I was in the real world that colleges theoretically prepare you for: no RAs, no meal plans, fewer second chances, etc. I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world.

There was one other difference: not going to school is far, far cheaper. And you have enough free time to defray even that minimal cost by working.

> I don't know why a fake version of the real world is a better preparation for the real world that the real real world.

Right! I don't know why doctors have to practice on cadavers. Stick a scalpel in their hand and let them operate!

You first.

Yes, and this practice, in addition to their further clinicals is called an apprenticeship. To pass the medical boards - just stick a pencil in their hand ;-) if they prepared adequately - they'll pass...

My goodness. This type of thinking is going to shackle you from ever doing something new and untried.

That's the most important lesson you don't learn in college: how to do something completely novel. And it's the most important lesson one can ever learn.

Me first, indeed. That's what I did; it works.

That's also a completely different argument from the one I was addressing. It sounds like your version is that 18 to 22-year-olds are too dangerous to be unleashed on society (the person getting the "operation" in your analogy), so we need to send them to school to keep them out of trouble.

But I don't understand why school is a better alternative than the job market.

You know what provides that atmosphere? New York. Or SF. Or Boston, Seattle, Austin--pretty much any city.

Ignoring that many people don't live near large cities like these, how should a 17-year old support themselves? What would they do instead of going to school? Waiting tables isn't scalable--there aren't enough restaurants.

If people are willing to move for college they should be willing to move for "uncollege" (and people who aren't willing to move are in trouble; see Detroit). Likewise, borrowing ~$12K/year for living expenses should be less burdensome than borrowing ~$40K/year for college.

(Although I don't think those particular objections are valid, I'm still not in favor of the "uncollege" concept.)

There actually probably are enough restaurants to cover it in NYC and SF.

Apparently you've never seen the 100 desperate people who line up to drop off their resumes when a restaurant in San Francisco is actually hiring?

"fewer second chances"

I have to vigorously disagree with the assertion that the real world offers fewer second chances. In fact, it's the other way around, the real world (i.e. marketplace) offers as many chances as you can create.

It's the rigidity of academia that closes off chances for a lot of people who don't fit the predefined molds (categorization by major, standardized pedagogical technique (the lecture), and on and on). Additionally, academia is often a zero sum game (because of grading on a curve).

You might not like his politics, but former Vice President Cheney's auotbiography shows how many second chances the real world provides.

  How does 20 Under 20 change education in any way?

You start with just 20 Under 20, and then scale it out after initial success. Just like YC.

  also provide an atmosphere where students can study, 
  party, hook up, make mistakes, and otherwise learn how to 
  become members of society...

  kids shouldn't pay $40k a year to party

Well, we are in the middle of a Great Recession and the projections are that the double dip is coming [1].

We need to decouple the stated reason (it will get you a job) from the actual reason (it is fun). Because it is not so much fun when it doesn't get you a job and the party is over.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/your-money/a-recession-for...

>You start with just 20 Under 20, and then scale it out after initial success. Just like YC.

The problem with scaling is that is assumes most people start at the same base line, need the same resources, and progress at the same speed. We've had an industrial model of education in this country for decades and it's not really working for us. I've seen countless people try to "solve" the education problem by modeling business practices and generally speaking it never works out.

20U20 doesn't have distinct time periods like YC, just progress meetings/interviews. I'm fully with you on getting rid of the single model of "mainstream" schooling - the industrial part is so true...

I don't agree that 20 Under 20 is a stab at changing the educational system. Nor is 20 Under 20 very much like YC. The projects that the Thiel Fellows are undertaking are not all money making enterprises. Many of them are attempts at disrupting current trends without the explicit goal of gaining profit. The 20 Under 20 program is for those who have great ideas but no money with which to see them come to fruition on their own.

Many of the Thiel Fellows have already undertaken 3rd level studies but the majority have not, and the Thiel Fellowship is not meant to be a condensed college replacement. It's a platform from which the Fellows can launch their ideas.

Education is a very broad term. We shouldn't limit it to what happens on a college campus, but I think that we should bear in mind that for the majority of people a college setting works best for their development, both social and intellectual.

But Harvard provides incremental value over Khan academy by serving as a networking tool and a credentialing mechanism.

For now, that's still true.

But LinkedIn/github/etc. are starting to provide better networks. As an employer, I give more credence to a kid with a good github account than I do to even a CS major from Harvard.

As for credentialing, that is the next big step. It is already the case that if you see a CV with Google or Facebook on it, it doesn't matter whether that person has a college degree. You know they've been vetted by an institution of comparable prestige to Harvard.

Solving the vetting and credentialing problem is going to be important, but it's not insuperable by any means. For example, ai-class.org, db-class.org, and ml-class.org are providing certificates of accomplishment. Any kid who nails Andrew Ng's CS229 class is definitely someone to consider over a liberal arts major, or even most CS undergrads.

Ironic that you mention Google, because they famously care about degrees. A lot.

on the question of credentials:

ootachi's comment is spot on. big companies like google, microsoft, and goldman sachs get way too many applications to not care about degrees.

yeah, if you filter by college degrees, you're going to miss out on some great candidates, but there are a lot of great candidates out there. you don't need all of them to find a great hire. its simply not practical to do in depth examinations of every candidate. a good github account? big companies get so many resumes that they don't even finish reading many of the resumes, so forget about looking at code on github.

maybe in the future, certain online universities may get enough general recognition that merely the presence of that university on a resume will pick up the interest of HR people, but currently, that's nowhere close to true. and until that happens, most kids will prefer harvard to taking classes online.

plus, its not like its mutually exclusive. a kid from harvard can have a good github account.

on the question of networks:

linkedin is a joke. i'm way more likely to get a job or start a business with someone i knew in college than someone off of linkedin.

github is a lot better, but its a pretty restricted space. you can get interviews for lots of kinds of jobs by going to harvard. programming is probably all you can get with a good github account (and probably not at really big companies). maybe if you're 18 and you know that all you want to is programming, maybe you should take a bunch of classes online, but the majority of 18 year olds probably want more flexibility.

"good github account? big companies get so many resumes that they don't even finish reading many of the resumes, so forget about looking at code on github."

They might be better off not accepting resumes and just recruiting people with outstanding github accounts.

A google recruiter emailed me and asked me to submit a resume after seeing my ruby talk list posts.

So, they already do that kind of thing :)

I second the other responses to this comment. However, I do think there is tremendous potential to create a company that facilitates this emerging process.

Instead of a school what we really need is a company that does some of what a school does (guided education/training/ credentialing), some of what a recruiter does (identify and matching talent), and some of what an HR department does (onboarding company specific training).

This is just based on my experience (not a pleasant one) in identifying and recruiting talent.

why are people downvoting this comment? do people think that khan academy provides the same level of networking and credentialing that harvard does? or that networking and credentialing have no value?

Thiel argues that the value of a BA from Harvard is almost ENTIRELY credentialing and signaling, and has very little to do with learning; and therefore, a BA from any school holds little value because it represents very little about what somebody actually learned in school.

I would say the top 10 schools in any area have enough "credentialing/signaling" value to be a good investment.

Outside of that top 10, the value is only in certain subjects (e.g. engineering, accounting, nursing).

And for the millions of us who didn't get into Harvard, what's the point?

"when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)"

I think what you are saying is a "Khan Academy" concept as opposed to the actual Kahn Academy...

As of the latest info on the Khan academy site (2/23/11) Kahn had done all the videos:

http://www.khanacademy.org/about/faq#videos

You're not suggesting that Sal Kahn is in any way shape or form a replacement for learning from multiple qualified professors, instructors etc in their respective fields (even in they are only phd candidates for example) are you?

Someone with no real world experience in many of the things he is teaching is "as good" as someone who has actually done something?

Sal says

"What topics do you plan to cover?

"My goal is to cover everything."

We are thinking very hard, right now, about how to open up Khan Academy content to other contributors without losing quality and consistency.

If you look at some of the latest videos, you'll see Sal recording videos side-by-side with Vi Hart and professors from Stanford (focused on medicine in this latter case) This is just the beginning.

I've heard Sal say many times, "In no way do I want to be the only person making videos. I just want to make videos until I die."

Don't get hung up on the Khan Academy. It's only one example. The Great Courses my kids have watched have been, well, great. They do cost two orders of magnitude more than Khan Academy but that's still a four order of magnitude potential savings.

Fourth, Thiel already wrote an entire book (the Diversity Myth) about how one of the major barriers to progress in higher ed is the millions of dollars of often federal money siphoned off to promote "diversity" -- which actually end up in the hands of special interests groups inside of universities. This is a bit like the auto union problem. Ideally you would save the US auto manufacturers but you can't if the unions have no commitment to making a better product and too much power. The next best thing may be to go your own way.

That said, I'm not convinced that 20 under 20 is a very good model for the long run. Hopefully Thiel will iterate.

"How could it be otherwise when there is now a six-order-of-magnitude gap between the cost of watching a Khan Academy video ($0) and the cost of dozing through the same content in a Harvard lecture hall ($250,000)?"

Oh come on, surely you know pre-calculus better than that.

If the cost is literally 0 (obviously time, etc., need to be accounted for) this is a gap of infinitely many orders of magnitude, not 6.