Those kids have a chance to test their business idea. If it fails, well, they can always go to college later! http://www.complex.com/tech/2013/05...-gives-20-teenagers-100k-each-to-skip-college
It's a great idea. College and universities are indoctrination factories that often hobble and stunt the fertile mind. Only conventional orthodoxy allowed etc. No uni encourages outside the box thinking.
Perhaps, Achilles, it is this sort of "thinking": "Only conventional orthodoxy [is] allowed etc. No uni encourages outside the box thinking.," that good universities discourage.
Which ones? I don't think so. It's called curriculum. That indoctrinates kids right off the bat. Theil is trying to empower the blank slate, before it's polluted. Encourage totally new paradigms. How can a radically new paradigm be built using constructs of the old one?
Gates met Ballmer at Harvard and dropped to start MSFT. Zuckerberg met Moskovitz and was funded by Saverin in the early days, also started in a Harvard dorm. Ken Griffin was trading converts in his Harvard dorm room. I don't mean to single-out Harvard, but those examples come to mind. Undergrad is a breeding ground in more ways than one. As though it's s detriment. Stupid idea.
You have a point, but in the majority, non ivy institutions you will only meet similar peers to your own demographic. Since i went to a non connected, weak school, the decision was made to send my sons to the haverford school pre K, K and early elementary ( pre divorce) and via that connection linked up with the Campbell soup family and the s*gels from QVC among multiple other HNWs ---- folks I couldn't access previously---- so the $175k tuition paid off socially----although not financially as of today...but great people to bounce ideas off Etc. surf
There is a reason why Silicon Valley is located near Stanford. Thiel's program simply a libertarian version of Y-Combinator, but meant to illustrate an ideological position. In reality it's just... narcissistic masturbation for Thiel. Those tiny few he funds are from a large pool of already-gifted students. Of course many of them will succeed -- they're entirely self-selected, far out on the tail of the curve. If they weren't funded by Thiel, they'd end up at Stanford, Cal Tech or MIT anyway. Because of this, their success will do nothing to prove how relevant or scalable such an approach to education could be.
I disagree. It's a pilot program for testing an idea , rather than simply libertarian gratification for Theil. A real life test for expansion on the idea. surf