Thiel Foundation fellowships have scary premise
James Temple, Chronicle Columnist
Sunday, May 29, 2011
On Wednesday, the Thiel Foundation named the first winners of its controversial "20 Under 20" fellowship program, a sort of anti-college scholarship in which young people are handed $100,000 to pursue entrepreneurial ideas rather than a university education.
It's a limited program designed to showcase a bigger - and troubling - idea: that higher education is highly overvalued.
The Thiel Foundation, the libertarian group formed by PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, has been spreading the message for months, telling any outlet that will listen that college is a waste of a lot of people's time and money. It's a "higher education bubble" - and we all know how dangerous those are.
The 24 fellows (they couldn't settle on just 20), ranging from 17 to 20 years old, will be given $100,000 cash grants to purse scientific or technological ideas over the next two years, in areas like space exploration, clean energy, education and robotics.
The broad aim of "20 under 20" is to produce more technological innovation, and in turn faster and more sustainable economic growth, said James O'Neill, head of the Thiel Foundation. That's best achieved by unleashing the creative and unsullied mind power of young people, before lofty student loans and academic orthodoxy funnel them into safe and risk-adverse careers, he said.
"We're not saying that college or graduate school is wrong for everyone," he said. "But for entrepreneurship, for innovation in fields like computers or the Internet ... there's a combination of skills and drive that typically (isn't) very effectively taught in colleges or graduate school, where real world experience is probably the best teacher."
Limited exceptions
For a limited number of incredibly smart, self-motivated people in these fields, this is all difficult to argue with. Indeed, there's little worry that the whip smart eager beavers who won the fellowships are going to be ruined by forgoing or postponing college.
But the concern lies with the broader message, which O'Neill articulates this way: "It would be good for people to think very carefully about the costs and benefits of college, before they decide whether and when and where to go to college. We don't think that college is the best answer for every smart kid."
At 18, 19 and 20, we're all pretty susceptible to believing that we've got a good shot to be the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, that whiz who dropped out of college and changed the world. But after exhausting that list, how many examples can you name off the top of your head?
For most people in most fields, a college education is the simple cost of admission into a career that will be more financially and psychologically rewarding.
But it's a fertile moment for the foundation's argument. In the wake of the Great Recession, with newspapers running stories about college graduates moving in with their parents or working as bartenders, it all carries a certain emotional resonance.
A handful of recent books and other observers have articulated arguments similar to Thiel's, including fellow hedge fund operator James Altucher (who has also questioned whether insider trading should be illegal). New York Magazine called the college backlash "one of the year's most fashionable ideas."
But it's important to recognize the political undercurrent in many of these arguments. Most of the voices arise from conservative or libertarian groups, like the Thiel Foundation. Some detect a strain of anti-intellectualism in the message, part and parcel of the long-running criticism that the educational establishment is too lefty, too focused on liberal arts, too dominated by pointy-headed professors who don't understand "real world experience."
Princeton University Professor Peter Brooks, who surveyed the work on this topic for the New York Review of Books, said the arguments echo that old American self-reliance ethic: We don't need any book learning or philosophizing, we just pull up our socks, open businesses and prosperity will come to all.
"These are dangerous waters," he said. "Of course, we need technological innovation and that may well be independent of the college curriculum, but I don't think that in any way suggests we ought to give up on college. Even techies benefit from reading great books and discussing philosophical concepts."
How process works
The seductive notion that groundbreaking ideas simply spring forth from bright minds contradicts the scientific thinking on how the process actually works, said Louise Yarnall, a senior research social scientist at SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, whose background is in educational psychology.
"We talk about creativity or critical thinking or entrepreneurship as if it's some abstract skill that you can put in a little bottle," she said. "But the current work in this space actually sees it a little differently. The really great creativity happens when it's built upon deep knowledge" in a variety of fields.
The anti-college rhetoric also cuts against the gospel of Silicon Valley, which has preached for years that the American education system is failing to turn out adequate numbers of qualified engineers to fuel innovation and growth. On the whole, they want more, not fewer, people with advanced math and science skills - the type you typically pick up at college, not on the job.
O'Neill said that there is a free market theory behind the foundation's argument: They hope that, over time, if fewer people go to college, it will force a market correction, driving down the cost.
But Brooks and others believe that the very real problem of escalating college tuition has more to do with dwindling public funds than with any sort of tulip-like mania surrounding higher education. One obvious answer is spending more, not fewer, public dollars on higher learning. Of course, that solution would be anathema to college critics on the right.
Peter Thiel told the National Review that he estimated 70 to 80 percent of U.S. colleges "are not generating a positive return on investment." O'Neill didn't respond to requests to see the math on that.
It's certainly true that some colleges charge too much and over-promise the sort of jobs that graduates are likely to get directly out of school, and students and parents should consider their options carefully.
But if most people continue to stubbornly cling to the notion that a college education is worth the cost, it might be because, on average, it's true.
Clearly the economic downturn dealt a serious blow to the prospects of recent college graduates, but few think it's more than a cyclical issue.
In 2008, young adults with a bachelor's degree earned about $16,000 more per year than those with a high school diploma, based on median incomes, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That means that graduates of private institutions will recoup the average four-year cost of tuition, room and board in a little over seven years, while a public school graduate will be ahead of the game in about three.
Even so, this is a very narrow way of measuring the value of an education.
"The real return ought to be a life which is more thoughtful and reflective," Brooks said. "Perhaps a better life."
E-mail James Temple at
jtemple@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 1JJOTU.DTL
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