This is stupid. Do people really think Thiel is personally managing every job opening at every company he's associated with?
Non-sequitur "gotcha" reporting at its worst. I expected better from Yglesias.
Non-sequitur "gotcha" reporting at its worst. I expected better from Yglesias.
In the end it is mostly a depiction of how having a degree is a door opener because it is a default filter for almost all hiring managers. Even hiring managers employed by a vocal advocate of skipping college.
"The elitist view in the U.S. is that even if people concede that college is not for education, the caveat will be that, well, surely it’s for all the smart people. What we want to suggest is that there are some very smart and very talented people who don’t need college."
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257531/back-future-pe...
"...are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard?"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20114584-281/talking-tech-...
The problem is that these reporters that Peter Thiel is anti-education or at least anti-higher education. He isn't. He has a problem with the current model of education. He thinks that there are more efficient models of education that are worth trying.
It's not black and white, it's much more nuanced. Thiel cannot go back in time and change the education model in the past. In the future if Theil's model works we will see more ads looking for people who started companies.
I don't agree with everything he says but I can respect his desire to change higher.
Job ads requirements are basically a way to scare away those who are limited by artificial restrictions.
www.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-Investment-Analyst-w-2901306
Quantitative skills in a field such as computer science,
mathematics, statistics, physics, or engineering; no
college degree required
I cannot imagine high schools providing substantial education to develop skills in those fields.
Thiel is, first and foremost, advancing his own interests by enouraging students to drop out and pursue startups in which he will have a stake.
He wants to hide this among otherwise valid criticisms of the system. But he really can't.
Unless he's paying you not to attend, you are foolish not to attend university because of what he says (versus your own reasons).