This is just highly subsidized education by a different name. OK, they don't the the substantial benefits of a faculty as eminent as a UC school and $100,000 is FAR less than what a private University would cost (ca $50,000/yr) and more than a UC. 24 people? A tiny experiment, I'm for it, but its tiny.dales wrote: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."
yrs,
rubato
