Peter Thiel
“To question education is really dangerous … It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.” Those were the words of PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel who launched a nationwide debate when he laid out his argument against higher education in an interview with TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy. According to Thiel, college just isn’t worth the financial investment. Schools, he says, rationalize their increasingly exorbitant costs by convincing students that if they work hard enough to get to, say, the Ivy League, they will be set for life once they graduate. But with unemployment rates among college graduates rising, and college-loan debt soaring, that logic is false. Thiel was even willing to put his money where his opinions were. Months before the April TechCrunch piece was published, he had started a program in which he offered $100,000 over two years to 20 people under the age of 20 if they would leave school to start a company. The offer and his provocative comments incited an onslaught of criticism from educators and others who pointed out that unemployment rates for non-college graduates are abysmal. But it turns out lots of people agree with Thiel. In May, the Pew Research Center published a study which found that 57% of Americans say that higher education fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend. In the end, it may matter less whether Thiel is right or wrong may matter less than the fact that he fueled a much-needed discussion about the quality and cost of higher education in the U.S.
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