But Wadhwa's advice is just ludicrous. If it's 2005, and you claim that housing is a bubble, the proper response isn't "Go put your money where your mouth is: start manufacturing mobile homes, or tents, or something." It's a non-sequitur: people are overpaying for education because they treat it as an asset: if you double the sticker price, buyers react by assuming that they're buying twice as much of it.
The right responses to a bubble: short it, or at least structure your life so you're not dependent on it. In real estate, that means renting rather than buying; in higher ed, that means dropping out and investing your efforts into tasks that better measure your underlying talents, and don't cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It's just a weird defense of the status quo: nowhere does Wadhwa ask questions like: have we overestimated how many people should go to college? Are we even willing to tell people that they'd be happier (and society would be better off) if they became electricians or plumbers? It seems like Thiel's framework is flexible enough to imagine a country where 50% of the population earns a masters, or where only 5% pursue a BA. Whereas Wadhwa's framework is robust enough to imagine a swing of half a standard deviation away from whatever the status quo is.
Full disclosure: it's a little early to tell, but I'm fairly successful; I dropped out of college my freshman year.