Examining the Thiel Fellowship: Where are they now? | Hacker News Reader

Examining the Thiel Fellowship: Where are they now?

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30 pointsrichardjordan22 comments

"From talking to them, many express that these experience have focused/clarified what they hope to gain from college, intellectually and personally."

As someone who made money on the internet in my teen years, I too spent quite a bit of time thinking college was a waste. For a lot of people, I still think it's a waste of their money, just that my reasoning is different.

Everyone can benefit from college, but you really need to be in the correct mindset to succeed and take advantage of it. Academic institutions, despite the grant process, politics, etc. really are interesting places where really smart people get together to do things.

The problem I see with college is that most of the people I knew weren't ready to be there. It should not be the default life funnel that it currently is, because most high schoolers (myself included) just weren't ready to take advantage of what was there. When you're ready for it, it's worth every penny.

edit: Sorry, didn't reply to correct post with that quote.

As someone who does a lot of thinking about education reform, people have asked me what I think about college. I basically say, "I'd have to see." Because the largest problems with colleges can be derived from the simple fact that most students aren't ready to be in college. That's why so much of undergraduate-level coursework is about filling the holes in general education... and such cramming in makes it difficult to get a good immersion in any specialization. That's why your major usually doesn't matter.

I want to see the core system, the primary and secondary schools, overhauled. Wait twenty years. Then see what problems there actually are.

What is the "correct mindset?"

Internal instead of external motivation to learn, I think.

I took a year off before college, lived on my own, and worked in a warehouse. For me, it was a great idea, and I think I got more out of college because of it.

Open to learning different things, open to spending time with and bonding with a diverse group of people.

Focus less on a singular goal and experience the life around you. Spending time living on campus is key to this.

College is broken in many ways. By definition this isn't a solution because you cannot do this for more than a tiny number of people. It's interesting that it appears desirable to return to college anyway afterwards, which suggests it's really just a resume builder and not much of an alternative at all. Still, I am always interested in anything which tries to shake up the status quo because the current college system isn't working, and the idea of just chucking more people through college really doesn't solve anything to solve our long term problems.

I'd say that the fellows returning to college aren't taking this as a resume builder, but as a useful series of experiences that they've learned from. From talking to them, many express that these experience have focused/clarified what they hope to gain from college, intellectually and personally.

As a fellow, I personally don't see this as a complete alternative to college, but more a support system for working on my project at this point in my life. I still value college and am excited to complete it; I have outstanding intellectual pursuits left there. There just aren't enough hours in the day for college to compete with my project (and vice versa) right now.

I'm not sure I need or want more padding on my resume, just more hours in my day.

So I appreciate what you're saying, and I bet it was a great experience. But it was launched as an alternative to college so if it doesn't achieve that and people do this as well as college, while that's fantastic and sounds great, it's not a step towards crafting a college alternative as t was originally pitched. At least from my understanding as I read about it when it was launched and subsequent coverage.

I don't think it was actually launched as an "alternative to college." I think the media played up that perception, because the media loves X vs. Y conflicts.

The amount of money the fellowship gives is about the same as two years worth of tuition at Stanford. In what ways is it not scalable?

I'd say it's not scalable not because of the money, but because it's incredibly difficult to find people for whom the Fellowship is the right thing:

The 20 fellows chosen in each batch are people who are not only sharp, but have projects and visions that they are already tackling. They tend to teach themselves what they need to learn to make those things work, and have the resourcefulness and skills to make their projects at least somewhat viable.

That doesn't quite capture the whole of it, but my point is that there aren't huge numbers of people who are a good fit for the fellowship, and my experience thus far has been that the fit criteria are narrower than you might expect.

There are tens of thousands of bright young kids under 20 reading the internet and getting big ideas. Maybe 10,000 read this website.

Yes but students pay for going to Stanford they're not paid to go. For this program to replace college someone has to pay for the fellowships. Hence not scalable. Money flows to student in one and away from student on other, no?

Actually, Stanford does essentially pay students to go. Each undergraduate student costs Stanford about twice as much as they pay in tuition. This is typically the case at elite colleges, which is why they spend so much time seeking donations from alumni.

(Also, the vast majority of students don't pay full tuition anyway because of the extensive financial aid systems at these schools.)

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection...

http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-...

That can't be right. First, your Delta study is woefully lacking in school - specific information. Second, the college confidential link's methodology seems to be missing a lot to me, particularly in the way of revenue. For example, for many universities (eg UPenn) the parking department is actually a huge revenue driver that must be taken into account to calculate overall university P&L, and that kind of thing is completely ignored here. Schools are businesses; you can't just ignore the other sources of revenue. As such, those estimates are hugely over inflated. Is Yale really spending $100k PER STUDENT each year? How could that possibly be?

Let's look at Stanford. Wolfram Alpha claims 6532 undergrads, $37380 tuition per year. If student cost was truly double tuition, Stanford would be operating at a loss of $244.4MM per year, and (all other considerations aside) the $12.6BB endowment would be gone in 50 years. Ultimately, the reported cost is often based on some key assumptions that aren't always stated, and I'm pretty sure we as a population don't actually have much clarity on the true cost of educating a student, if it's even possible to really quantify such a thing (try measuring the monetary cost of creating a supportive environment or a caring teacher).

I'm not sure why you find this so a priori implausible.

You're right that the CC link misses revenue sources -- but isn't that the point? Stanford seems to be using money from non-student revenue sources to subsidize a majority of per-student expenses. (That is, students are getting "paid.")

Or are you assuming that all that other revenue still comes from students (e.g. parking), or directly from an unchanging endowment? Stanford raises hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from people who aren't students every year, more than enough to cover that $244.4m shortfall directly. Direct income from students is only a small part of the overall university budget: http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances

Anyway, I'm only making a factual spending claim here. I make no claim about the effectiveness of the spending in educating students -- that's a separate issue.

Also, 6% (a conservative return) on a $12.6BB endowment is $720 million annually.

Just pay yourself the money you were going to pay a college.

which is very much NOT the same as someone else paying you money and certainly not available to the majority of people who pay for college on huge subsidize loans

And in January, the unemployment rate for college grads was 3.7 percent, as opposed to 8.1 percent for those with only high school diplomas.

Those are average numbers across the board, and perhaps the opportunities that come from a high-profile program like the Thiel Fellowship outweigh those for the average college student. But at least for now, the data shows college is the more lucrative path.

Correlation does not imply causation.

In general, you're right. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to defend the claim that there is no causative relationship whatsoever flowing from college education to employment. I don't think it's terribly controversial to claim that employers pretty universally view more education as a positive factor on job applications, all other things held equal.

edit: to elaborate further, I think you might be bringing up the wrong fallacy here - at least, if you're looking to highlight the problems with representing program participants by the general population of high school-educated people.

What I'm saying is that it's not obvious that if the student who was admitted to Harvard decided not to go, he'd make less than the student who was admitted and did go.

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