Why Should We Believe Peter Thiel’s “Education Bubble” Theory?
It seems that higher education – more than ever – has become a polarizing issue, with little room to maneuver in the middle. On the one hand, you either believe universities are large, out of date, bureaucratic messes that have little to do with the practical realities of the “real world’; or on the other hand, you maintain they play a critical role in the development and education of the workforce.
The most recent and perhaps interesting development in this debate was when Peter Thiel, the American business magnate, venture capitalist , and co-Founder of PayPal claimed that we’re no longer in a tech bubble, but an education bubble. He argues that a university education is a waste of time and money.
His solution? Offer the best twenty kids $100,000 over the course of two years to drop out of school and start their own companies. It’s certainly an innovative approach to the problem, if not controversial.
It’s a particularly odd position to take for someone who has profited from his connections (think Paypal, Linkedin etc.) to his alma mater – Stanford University. Would Peter Thiel be where he is today without Stanford? Highly unlikely. It’s would be like Warren Buffet saying you should never invest in stocks.
While it’s a commendable initiative, it doesn’t do the debate justice. There are a lot of different ways to get to the same place and for some a university education will be the most influential route, for others joining the workforce or starting their own company may be the right one.
To be sure, far too many people go to university for the wrong reasons – either they were pushed, didn’t know what they wanted to do, or simply saw it as an opportunity to take it easy for a few years.
Moreover, Thiel is right in taking universities to task for doing such a poor job of preparing their students for the workforce. Yet, having an ivy-league educated billionaire who’s used his connections from university to make his fortune as a spokesman for the “anti-university” movement doesn’t exactly add credibility or weight to the issue.
