Is College a Waste of Time for Young Entrepreneurs?

Parent Cafe
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<p>"Last week, Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, announced that his foundation had just chosen its first class of “20 Under 20 Thiel Fellows.” It’s a group of wiz kids that will receive $100,000 each over two years to pursue their entrepreneurial ventures, all of which are in the science and technology fields. Sadly, only two of the awardees are young women, but that’s another subject for another post. What has the media buzzing is Thiel’s requirement that his fellows either forgo or drop out of college..."</p>

<p>Here we go with another one of those "Is college worth it?" articles. Parents, have any of you been asking yourself that same question?</p>

<p>Is</a> College a Waste of Time for Young Entrepreneurs? | BNET</p>

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<p>Let’s keep this in perspective here - out of the whole population of “under 20s” he chose 20 who were exceptional from both a science, technology and entrepreneurial viewpoint. Then he’s giving them each $100,000 to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. Now, should any of these kids fail neither they nor their parent have lost anything financially and the kids can go to college as if they took a two year gap. Clearly these kids are exceptional and, in all likelihood, will succeed no matter what route they take, but it will be interesting to see where they are in two years and what their opinion is regarding not attending college even for one year prior to working.</p>

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<p>$100K from Thiel for not going to college? Nice gig if you can get it. But what does that have to do with the millions of other under-20 kids that he didn’t give any money to? How would remaining uneducated benefit them? </p>

<p>This is an interesting experiment, but I don’t see what point it will prove beyond the narrow confines of the program, nor how it will lead to a useful General Theory of Entrepeneurship, since the vast majority of kids will NOT have some benefactor showering them with hundreds of thousands of dollars to go out there and follow their dreams.</p>

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<p>Two year paid gap, with something interesting to write about in terms of “extracurricular activities” when they apply to university.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure what Thiel’s point is here: that there’s a need for more entrepreneurs or, that ANY eighteen year-old can be bribed into dropping out of college? If it’s the former, why not just wait until they’ve graduated? If, it’s the latter, somehow $100,000 doesn’t sound like quite enough money.</p>