"In 2011, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel began paying college kids to drop out of school to develop a start-up. Elon Musk, who led the payments company with Thiel before becoming CEO of Tesla and creating SpaceX, has a similar view of higher education.
During his keynote at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday, an audience member asked Musk about the necessity of college education.
‘You don’t need college to learn stuff,’ he said. The value is ‘seeing whether somebody can work hard at something.’
He added that ‘colleges are basically for fun and to prove you do your chores, but they’re not for learning.’
It sounds a lot like the front page of the website for the Thiel Fellowship program, which gives anyone 22 or younger the ability to apply for a two-year $100,000 grant ‘to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.’ College students have to drop out to join." …
You can watch the video online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGvPze2nhLs), but Musk showed up over half an hour late and appeared to be completely out of it, giving many attendees the impression he was high on drugs. He didn’t even answer the student’s actual question (which was about whether SpaceX would drop the requirement for employees to hold at least a bachelors or masters degree). So I wouldn’t take anything he had to say during this interview at all seriously.
Very important and timely topic. These are two of the most visionary people on the planet.
Newsweek characterized Thiel’s opinion:
“ today’s elite universities are overpriced relics holding back innovation and contributing to a technology deficit that will have disastrous economic consequences.”
I imagine he doesn’t think too highly of tenure. LOL
“ Their [Harvard’s] sense of identity comes from exclusion.” — Thiel
While there are a few people who can self-educate effectively (some of whom succeed in Thiel fellowships or similar, although those who have already started college have the backup of returning to college if they burn through Thiel’s money unsuccessfully), most people probably would learn more effectively with the structure of a school and assistance of instructors. I.e. college may not be absolutely required for everyone learning the kind skills typically learned in college, but it is likely very helpful for most who want to do so.
I’ll admit I’m a bit suspcious when kids are told to skip college(or drop out), especially by these two, as Thiel has two degrees from Stanford and Musk graduated from Penn.
I’d be more ‘suspicious’ if Thiel didn’t have the experience of traditional education. That he has the experience gives him a more balanced perspective. He has been sponsoring his Thiel Fellowship for nearly a decade now, so has seen people become successful both with and without a college education.
Can’t comment on Musk, as I have not seen the video of his proclamation…when he was evidently possibly under the influence.
These two are the exception to the rule (among a few others) and indeed quite amazing individuals. But the majority need a degree in order to be able to “open the doors” for the next level. Many degrees do require a lot of different prerequisites nonrelated to their intended major which is very “old” school. Many college students feel like many of the courses being taken in the first two years of college are basically no different than what they had taken in High School.
Super-tip-top individuals can change the world with or without school. Always has been true, will probably always be so. No news.
Some skills (OK, mostly coding) are better learned by doing than sitting in class. I hope I'm not bursting anyone's bubble by saying this, but with computing there's really not a lot to know, and the biggest challenge is usually finding good problems and creatively solving them. Most of these guys mentioned above were working in software, not going the Thomas Edison or Henry Ford route of capital intensive, hard engineering.
On the other hand most of the hard sciences take a lot of book work and expensive labs to get out to the frontiers where most new work is happening. You might be able to teach yourself enough math to become a crypto-currency god, but you need to learn organic chemistry before you can start creating drugs and you'll need a lab to actually try things out. You need a fab of some sort to innovate in a lot of the materials science fields that'll change solar power, a place to experiment with chemical engineering that'll fix pollution or a bio lab to take CRISPR-like genetics tools in a new direction. You can't even talk about new drug innovations out in the garage without having tens of millions of dollars to lined up to take the next step.
College is not for everyone. Lots of jobs don't need a deep education to perform them. My current company hires experienced software guys, but my last place grabbed community college guys by the busload and sorted thru them looking for good employees. Some engineering innovation is certainly getting done by guys in a pole barn somewhere far away from any professors, just as it always has. Lots of sales guys go to school, but why if you can read people, fill out your forms and present the company effectively. Obviously you do that without a degree, but many folks still use that sheepskin as a marker for social skills, persistence and a proven ability to hang out with professionals.
TL;DR If you want young folks to change the world they need tools. Lots of physical things like labs and plants, lots of fundamental knowledge to build upon, lots of money to try things out, lots of other minds to bounce ideas off of. Does any one know where a clever 20 year old can get access to these things? For most folks that’ll always be college.
Theil has conflated his financial success with changing the world. What he was part of was kind of easy because once the internet and broadband became widely available (requiring federal DARPA funds to design and massive corporate dollars to build out) it was just a matter of creativity to blow things up. But the next big things like water scarcity, pollution, climate change, alternative energy sources, new drugs, or exploiting new genetics tech are not going to happen in a dorm room (Facebook) or garage (Apple). He wants to free the unicorns, which is great I suppose, but he still has to hire college grads for most of his work.
Let companies administer whatever skills- or ability-tests they want and you will see the “requirement” of a college degree melt away for the most part.
There actually is quite a bit to know in computing, but the barrier to self-education for someone with strong self-motivation is relatively low compared to some other areas like you mentioned. Computers are inexpensive compared to engineering or science labs, or field work to study some social science question.
RE: “Let companies administer whatever skills- or ability-tests they want and you will see the “requirement” of a college degree melt away for the most part.”
One of mine has a CS degree; every job interview-every single one-had a “skills” test. The interviews sometimes last hours because of this.
But to get the interview, a CS degree was needed, so don’t see the degree requirement melting away anytime soon.
I don’t think college is for everyone and I do think many students would do well to go to a vocational school. However, people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are the exception and not the rule. Most people are not like them at all, and most kids who drop out of college are not founding a start-up or getting the opportunity to start one.
For lots of jobs (e.g. in computing), this is the norm, but many still list a bachelor’s degree as a requirement (e.g. many jobs at Tesla and SpaceX – see links in reply #3). Some job listings do list “bachelor’s degree in ___ or equivalent experience” but those are in the minority.
Also, many jobs require or highly desire occupational licensing or certification, such as many health professions, lawyers, accountants (CPA), civil engineers (PE), actuary, etc… Occupational licensing commonly requires or highly desires a specific type of education or degree as a prerequisite for licensing.
Many “general business” jobs list a bachelor’s degree as a requirement, even though doing the job may not require general or major-specific skills indicated by a bachelor’s degree. The employer may just be using it as a way to reduce the volume of applicants to a manageable level. But such credential creep means that job seekers may need to earn educational credentials that they may not strictly need.
Companies today cannot administer the skills and ability tests that they would like to. We know this from many adverse EEOC decisions, to say nothing of the numerous cases since Griggs in 1971. The tests administered today look nothing like the tests that were administered in the 1960s, for instance.
I’m not saying this is right or wrong as a societal matter. However, one predictable result has been the seemingly inexorable growth of “credential creep” as a proxy for those attributes that companies would prefer to ascertain directly.
15-what are you basing this on? My kid's experience-as well as all his classmates-is that the tests administered are substantive, reflecting directly upon the ability of the applicant to actually apply CS to the work of that organization. These aren't "aptitude" tests or similar; they are tests of actual subject knowledge.
And to get an interview-with these onerous tests-a degree is required.
@oldlaw Take a look at the tests used in the UK where these legal restrictions do not apply (some examples are here: https://www.assessmentday.co.uk/). Its extremely common for jobs up to the highest levels of a company to administer numerical and verbal reasoning tests (my SIL was asked to do one for a CEO job!). Many of them are very challenging, more comparable to the LSAT rather than the SAT, and extremely long tail (I found it laughable when I discovered that people practice for months for the LSAT and the questions are ones than I would have expected to complete with no preparation whatsoever). For example the numerical reasoning test used by my employer (a high end strategy consulting firm) was standardized to a level where it was expected that about 5% of college graduates would score 18 out of 32 or above in 30 minutes (and you eliminated candidates who didn’t achieve that level).
Is it really better to limit testing strictly to subject knowledge rather than ability? Why do we allow colleges and law schools to filter candidates on the basis of ability but not employers? Many job specific skills can be learned by the employee once they start work, and employers usually hope that their new hire will be able to take on a wider range of roles and responsibilities with the company in the future.
In practice, ability and subject knowledge are not easily separable for the purpose of testing. Ability obviously affects the acquisition of subject knowledge, but relevant ability is difficult to measure without getting some subject knowledge effects.
The LSAT may be trying to look for ability to succeed in law school and law, but it includes subject knowledge that law schools believe to be relevant for law school and law (reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, logical reasoning).
17-my point was-at least in CS-tests are being administered to all applicants who get past the initial review stage-and to even get to the initial review stage, you need a CS degree. The tests are directly related to the skills desired by the employer, and can take hours.
But in order to get the interview, and get a chance to take the tests, you’ve got to have a CS degree.