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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

This is nice and all, but Thiel does the exact same thing with his fellowships: winnows a crowded field and bestows highly-visible laurels on a few already-talented selectees.

After reading this article, I'm still not sure what his alternative plan is.

> Don’t outsource your future to a big institution. You need to figure it out for yourself.

Great advice for a 17 year old.

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Is there any need for a "plan"? Ultimately having a default option being college is obviously not working all that well for a lot of the people going down that route (dropout rates are high and finding a job in your field isn't a guarantee).

The "plan" would be to take an honest look at yourself and decide what sort of career makes sense for you. That might mean you go to a trade school, it might mean that you go to college, it might mean something I can't think of right now :)

The worst advice is saying just go to college and it will all work itself out.

> The worst advice is saying just go to college and it will all work itself out.

That employment and wage statistics say that's actually better advice than "don't go to college and it will all work itself out."

Exactly. I'm sure really great online education stuff will exist in the future, but now? It's a poorly organized, incomplete mess, with a few great resources and a ton of holes.

Stop encouraging people to abandon the old system when the new one is nowhere near ready yet.

...and I imagine the alternative plan for most people would be an application for a job at a big institution, in industry.

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