Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryguytilidie | Hacker News Reader

Since every comment seems to want to point to Stanford's rich history, diverse degrees and entrepreneurial excitement (I'm not doubting that Stanford has all of these things) Let me try to make something clear: The author isn't taking issue with any of those things. The author is taking issue with 20 year olds who have spent 50-100k on their education being asked to drop out for a .1% stake in a company so they can make their professor million. It is a very obvious conflict of interest, great school or not.

View on HN

as one of the students at this company:

1) we all got our undergraduate degrees. we dropped out of our graduate programs.

2) we were never encouraged by a faculty member to drop out. we were encouraged by the strength of the company and product. most all of us never talked with our university-affiliated investors about the company until after we dropped out, and after they invested (yes, basically all of them invested after we all dropped out. that's how we had a product to demo them with...)

Thanks for correcting this misconception. I expect that Stanford, like MIT (where I was), has policies in place explicitly prohibiting graduate students to work in any way for companies owned by their advisers or supervisors while working for them as students.

It was annoying while I was in grad school, but it makes a ton of sense for preventing the appearance that a faculty member might abuse their authority to get a student to work on something that provides them with financial incentives.

This is standard conflict-of-interest mitigation stuff, I'd be amazed if Stanford didn't have it in place as well. I think at MIT they can't even offer you a job until you're no longer enrolled to prevent sub-par graduate research getting through because an adviser wants a student to work for them. (i.e. "If you accept this job, I'll sign off on your thesis.")

If they're attending Stanford, they've not spent 50-100k on their education. The school's endowment is sufficiently large that significant financial aid is granted even to individuals from (relatively) wealthy families.

I have friends for whom UConn in-state tuition was more than attending Stanford, even when accounting for Cost of Living and frequent flights to and from California.

They still have to pay back those loans. There is no way I would be able to get financial aid to go to stanford without paying loans.

Just remember that financial aid includes loans. So while a university may boast that the average student receives enough financial aid to cover the full cost of their education, that could still mean they are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. (And I say this without any knowledge of Stanford's ratio of grants and scholarships to loans).

(And I say this without any knowledge of Stanford's ratio of grants and scholarships to loans).

oh, well, don't let that stop you from chiming in!

Why would I let my ignorance keep me from forming an inaccurate opinion, that would be un-American (hell, it was hard enough just to put that acknowledgement in there admitting my ignorance...I felt dirty).

I think you and nick are using different interpretations of the term "financial aid." If you replaced what nick said with "financial aid grants," it would hold equally true.

That's what has always annoyed me by the term financial aid. For the student or parent, they hear it and think "free money". Whereas once you start talking to the schools it ends up meaning a bit of free money and tons of loans. I'm years beyond university, but I do wish they would separate the two into financial aid and educational loans. It would give students and a parents a more accurate expectation of cost.

Stanford '06, dirt poor family, received enough financial aid to cover the full cost of my education, grand total of debt at the end: $8k.

I don't know anyone Stanford undergrad who ended up with even close to $100k in debt. Maybe my circles are limited, however.

Not every young adult understand the signs that they are already entering into a corrupt business practice.

Because debt that can't be discharged doesn't count!

being asked to drop out

Are they? Or are they choosing to drop out? Did somebody force Bill Gates out of Harvard in order to go found Microsoft?

At least in some cases, they're being asked - or paid:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2013/09/11/peter-thi...

That aside, I find your example a bit disingenuous. It's easy to say it's the right choice when you're looking at one of the relatively small number of people who have done this successfully. But using that as the example underemphasis the fact that the vast majority who take that route don't enjoy massive successes, and most are -- according to Atlantic's sources - less financially successful than their graduating counterparts:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/the-myth...

Is Peter Thiel a Stanford professor stealing his own students away? How would Stanford, or any university, prevent Thiel from offering students money to drop out?

Internal discipline?

MIT explicitly forbids an academic adviser from offering employment (directly or by a company they own) to any student while they are still enrolled. Otherwise you could have a situation of "if you accept this job, I'll let you graduate".

It's not hard to imagine that not having a policy like that would open Stanford up to lawsuits, if for instance a student feels compelled to work for someone in order to graduate. It might still happen, but if it is discovered I'm sure there are ways to address it.

I didn't address your second point. I don't think Bill Gates's success is relevant. The question is whether students are choosing to drop out or being asked to quit. Not whether they will be successful.

I picked Bill Gates as a well known example of somebody who chose to drop out. I'm sure at least one unknown classmate of Gates also dropped out and didn't achieve much, but since I don't know their name, I didn't use them as an example.

I did find it strangely difficult to find examples of dropouts who didn't amount to much - go figure ;)

you're correct-- we were in no sense "asked" to drop out. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6588385 :)

I don't see a difference. You need a job offer before you make a choice. The job offer is someone asking them to drop out, is it not?

> The author is taking issue with 20 year olds who have spent 50-100k on their education

No, the author never mentions or even implies that at all

The author explicitly mentions conflict of interest:

There are conflicts of interest here; and questions of power dynamics. The leadership of a university has encouraged an endeavor in which students drop out in order to do something that will enrich the faculty.

ryguytilidie then made the connection to what some of the problems are with this conflict of interest. One of them relates to students dropping out but having paid for school.

The author mentions 20 year olds dropping out of Stanford. Are you really being obtuse over the amount of tuition these students may or may not have made? You literally believe that this was never implied?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com