Dropping out of school to prove your genius and getting paid
A while back, I mentioned the Thiel Fellowship, a unique program by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to spur young innovators to drop out of school to try to launch a business based on their ideas. The first class of fellows has been named.
In return for their gamble, Thiel, whose billions also come from investing in Facebook, provides the 24 fellows with a $100,000 grant and mentoring assistance. Several hundred people applied for the grants, which have been awarded to, among others, an 18-year-old hoping to extract minerals from asteroids and comets and a 19-year-old who wants to apply unschooling tenets to higher education.
These young fellows — recipients must be under the age of 20 — are in a class by themselves.
Consider the bio of 17-year-old Laura Deming: “She wants to extend the human lifespan for a few more centuries—at the very least. She started working in a biogerontology lab when she was 12, matriculated at MIT when she was 14, and now at 17 plans on disrupting the current research paradigm by changing the incentives embedded in today’s traditional funding structures. Too often, researchers design quick incremental projects to please grant-making bodies instead of taking on risky, long time horizon problems. With her fund IP Immortal, Laura plans on commercializing anti-aging research, bringing therapies out of the lab and into the market sooner.”
For these true geniuses among us — and I believe they are very few despite all the parents who contend that their children are “gifted” — college may not be necessary. (Thiel himself earned a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.)
Scoring a perfect score on the SAT or ACT signifies that student is smart, but it takes a different level of brilliance and drive to create something where there was nothing before or develop a new technology that changes industries or invents them.
According to The New York Times: (The Times now limits free visits to its web site, so you may not be able to access this story.)
Mr. Thiel, a contrarian investor and libertarian known for his controversial views, knows that suggesting education is not always worth it strikes at the core of many Americans’ beliefs. But that is exactly why is he doing it. “We’re not saying that everybody should drop out of college,” he said. The fellows agree to stop getting a formal education for two years but can always go back to school. The problem, he said, is that “in our society the default assumption is that everybody has to go to college.”
“I think a program like this would have been unthinkable in 2007, but I think you increasingly have people who are graduating from college, not being able to get good jobs, moving back home with their parents,” he said. “I think there’s a surprising openness to the idea that something’s gone badly wrong and needs to be fixed.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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37 comments Add your comment
LeeH1
May 25th, 2011
5:11 pm
Aristotle said that education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a bonfire. The purpose of an education is not to get a specific job, it is to shape a person’s ability to think, reason and learn.
Surprisingly, a number of people never get these abilities. This explains how politics work.
Paddy O
May 25th, 2011
5:13 pm
Here is a question: What phenomena has more impact on a weather system: The temperature of the ocean or the moon?
Jordan Kohanim
May 25th, 2011
5:50 pm
LeeH1-
Great quote. Great point!
Angela
May 25th, 2011
5:55 pm
Although, I am a major advocate of getting a formal education I am not totally against what Thiel is talking about. My daughter always tells me when I am preaching about college to younger students that college/school is not for everyone. Aristotle made a good point education is designed to shape how one thinks, give them the ability to think with reasoning and logic and to learn what is needed to acheive human success.
But, the other side of me have all too much experience with young children not wanting to learn. The value of education begins in the home not at school. A teacher’s JOB is to give information, make sure that each student masters that information and use that information to move forward to acheive academic success.
I do believe in encouraging people/students to follow their dreams and ideas. I do belive that change is our future and that changes must be set to benefit all human beings not just self. But, I do have one concern about Thiel, what is in it for him? These students must know that in some way he will own them.
@Paddy O
Your question is very thought provoking. It would lead to a good research question for students.
Paddy O
May 25th, 2011
6:15 pm
Genuine genius could drop out and pursue an idea no one else contemplated. That might be 1% of the population, if properly cultivated. Of that 1%, some will spin off into organized crime.
When I went to college, Seton Hall University, we had a class in logic, very valuable, ethics and contemporary moral values – also valuable. When I finished up at W. GA, I again had an ethics class, land use ethics.
This topic is nice to wax philosophic, but as a general policy, not worth much ink. If we could get 85% of the kids in GA to graduate HS happily, our state would be much better off. As it is, and this is NOT something a teacher can correct/overcome the majority of the time, up to 40% or so of the folks here are redneck, with a problem with authority, which propels them to object irrationally to things and attack authority because “they are being picked on” – as though they are in kindergarden. Our state also suffers from a plague of wilfull ignorance.
Joyce
May 25th, 2011
7:16 pm
Paddy….Paddy….we are not as red-necked as you think. Sure we love our great culture, and I am sure with this statement. You thought the Civil War— yes ! We have a great heritage in Georgia–we care for our fellowman/woman, we do things for our neighbors, we care for our elderly. And, yes we love homemade apple pie. What’s wrong with a pick-up truck in the yard after all a new will cost as much or more than a BMW. Look what Georgia has Tyler Perry who is sending a great message of obedience to children and family unity all over the world through his TV shows and movies; the great musicans which varies from country, classical, pop, etc; great medical doctors; great architects. great scholars; great inventors, This is just to name a few. And, yes some grew up in poor homes, no money and one parent families (due to death, divorce, etc.) And, they excerise their right to become what they wanted to become. I know some of these people were high school drop outs. Yes, the next time you think of red-neck- think it is just a phase- they too will get to live out their dreams. I remember when children of Mill workers were treated like 3 class citizens. but, they new their best bet was to get a good education. And, if you check or do research on this population from the 1945 until 1963 you will find the major of these children went on the college and have been productive in society regardless of the way they were treated by the blue-blood children of the town.
Several I know are multi-millionaires today. So be careful who you call red-neck- when you walk into an emergency room the doctor maybe the one you made reference to a few years back!
Echo
May 25th, 2011
7:26 pm
I’m really starting to like Paddy O.
Batgirl
May 25th, 2011
8:06 pm
While I agree that not everyone needs college, I believe that, right or wrong, credentials mean something as does going through the proper channels. I am reminded of one of the stories from Outliers about a young man who, through a series of bad luck, was not able to finish college. He is a brilliant scientist and has gone great research on his own. However, because of his lack of credentials, his work is not accepted by the scientific community. I’m afraid that by choosing to stay on the outside, the work of these young people won’t be accepted. But, they are young, and can always change course if they need to.
I graduated from college in the early eighties when jobs were scarce, although not as bad as now. Despite having to live with my parents and work for a temp service for a very long time, I never once regretted getting a degree, but then I’m not a genius.
Paddy, my southern roots go back 400 years, my Georgia roots 170 years, and I agree with you completely.
Batgirl
May 25th, 2011
8:10 pm
That should be “done great research”.
John
May 25th, 2011
8:59 pm
The last thing we need is another dumb, profitless social network site that adds little value to society, which is all these supposedly innovative young entrepreneurs focus on.
Drew
May 25th, 2011
9:24 pm
So one kid gets to work automating more jobs once done by humans, while Deming exponentially increases the world’s population at any given time? What could go wrong?
ABC
May 25th, 2011
9:48 pm
Maureen, there’s a difference between gifted and genius. They are not interchangeable. Gifted is about top 10 percentile. Genius is top 1% of the top 1% of the population. Those fellows, I think, fit the genius bill and will be just fine skipping college.
For the vast, vast, VAST majority of people, education is important. That said, college is not for everyone. It is not even for most people. College is for the bright, competent and capable. There’s nothing wrong with studying a trade: mechanics, plumbing, electrician, chefs, A/C repairmen, etc. Those jobs aren’t going to India any time soon.
QE3
May 25th, 2011
10:40 pm
“But, I do have one concern about Thiel, what is in it for him? These students must know that in some way he will own them.”
Good question. This is a sly way of providing venture capital TAX FREE! What a brilliant idea. The $100,000 lures the next generation of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. These are the kind of students who are ready to go by the end of high school. After these geniuses have spent their grant and done some basic research tax free, Thiel can skim the cream and offer the chosen ones real venture capital. Of course, very few of these young entrepreneurs would be able to capitalize themselves. Theil would gain control of any innovative inventions early on at rock bottom prices. This is the type of lending J.P. Morgan did for Nikola Tesla (inventer of alternating current), Thomas Edison, and George Westinghouse. The fruit of their labors as well as that of others is all rolled into the banker’s “General Electric”. Isn’t that the maker of the failing nuke plants in Fukushima?
QE3
May 25th, 2011
10:41 pm
HELP! I’m stuck in the filter!
another comment
May 25th, 2011
11:27 pm
Maureen, you get the first 20 visits to the NY times web site per month for free. To circumvent that all you need to do is go and get the title of the article type it into the Google search bar, hit search, and the article will come up for free even if you are over your 20 limit. You can also get to them through links, so if you put the link, people can get to it for free. They can also get to them for free via http://www.msnbc when they publish some of the articles. Alot of people are doing this and not subscribing to NY times ridiculous $35 per month price. Hopefully, they will drop it like they did before when they tried to charge for editorials.
Columbia Grad
May 25th, 2011
11:31 pm
Would you really hire an incompetent, incapable dimwitted mechanic, plumber, etc.? Just because these people in these trades don’t have degree doesn’t make them less bright, competent, and capable. Only that the college environment, in which only a small percentage actually excel, is not for them.
Columbia Grad
May 25th, 2011
11:37 pm
Yuck, writing on a phone…
“Just because the people in those trades don’t need a degree…”
FYI, when I say excel, I’m mean actually taking advantage of one’s education in school and out. I know way to many people who screwed around in college and ended with an average GPA. Out the gate, they end up with a low-level office job, at best, and are still in a low-level job years later making 45K.
On the other hand, my older brothers both skipped college to work on cars. They own a few shops and make well over 45K. Who’s more competent, capable, and bright?
Columbia Grad
May 25th, 2011
11:42 pm
Dang it! “too many”
William Casey
May 26th, 2011
12:04 am
Interesting article. It brings to mind the venerable question: exactly what is “genius?” I’ve always liked “one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration.” Maybe Thomas Edison. Can’t remember.
@John: I’ve found Facebook to be a tremendously valuable tool. As a retired teacher/coach, I treasure the ability to reconnect with thirty years worth of students. The genius part was making it free to the user.
ABC
May 26th, 2011
7:55 am
Columbia grad: I meant bright, competent, and capable ACADEMICALLY. I believe it’s a different set of “smarts” that are needed for the trades.
I consider myself fairly intelligent but I just cannot understand mechanics. My husband has explained it time and time again and I just don’t get it. I think it has to do with two things: 1. it doesn’t interest me IN THE LEAST and 2. i know I don’t have to know it since I can always get someone else to take care of it.
Single Signal
May 26th, 2011
8:46 am
The curriculum itself is at fault. When humans finally understood that the earth was and is round, and orbits the sun, then the zeitgeist evolvds away from what it was when the same folks believed the earth was flat and the sun orbited the earth.
Einstein said that it doesn’t matter if the sun orbits the earth or if the earth orbits the sun. The effect of a day/night cycle is the same to observers. Bill Maher said that way too many folks still think that the sun orbits the earth. He thinks that if we are evolving, then we are evolving toward a doomsday of ignorance and fear.
I think we should start with light itself, and try to explain just what it is. We should teach elementary kids about photons and the electromagnetic spectrum and maybe one of those kids will one day understand where our own data is being analyzed incorrectly and tell us where our own thinking went wrong.
Light. Let’s start with light.
And I want some crayons to draw with.
RJ
May 26th, 2011
8:46 am
There is definitely a difference between “gifted” and genius. @abc is dead on.
I don’t think college is for everyone. I’ve told my oldest that I don’t even know if she’ll complete college due to her field, but it can be beneficial. We do need mechanics, truck drivers, HVAC technicians, hairstylists, etc. All of these careers make as much or more than I do as an educator.
Dr NO
May 26th, 2011
9:05 am
The Moon.
Paddy O
May 26th, 2011
9:32 am
Joyce – you seem to think if you ignore reality, it is not really there. The key manifestation of redneckism in teenagers is the drop out rate here in GA – that is very close to 40% statewide. To employers, it indicates that went presented with crap to deal with, you quit. I would say 90% of jobs present their occupants with crap at least on a weekly basis, so you can easily conclude that drop outs are not worth the investment in training. McDonald’s now hires mostly (70%) rednecks, at least out here in rural GA, and their customer service is absolutely awful – what once was the cleanest restaurant around in now typically a fly nest with trash falling out of trash cans, inside and out. It is amazing that people still buy food from them – but their ads are aimed at who these days?
Reality
May 26th, 2011
9:49 am
Anyone that thinks that they can economically extract minerals from asteroids and comets with $100,000 seed money should not be in college, anyway.
bob leblah
May 26th, 2011
9:50 am
@Paddy O – I’m not completely sure what you’re point is. I will say this though, if you’re saying the source of the problem is bad attitude in our I want it now society, I agree. Taking a step further back, it is terrible parenting. But this rampant across the country. Also, I’m not sure what your definition of “redneck” is, but there are other cultures that greatly influence this behavior and attitude as well.
Dr NO
May 26th, 2011
10:03 am
“McDonald’s now hires mostly (70%) rednecks”
Hmmm…Im seeing different things at the McDonalds in my area. However, the customer service is atrocious and the entire staff/ the human garbage should, more often than not, be tossed into the nearest landfill.
Gee…I wonder if one of those “living wages” would help? Then again someone who aspires to be a french fry cook probably missed the boat long ago.
Dr NO
May 26th, 2011
10:05 am
Reality
May 26th, 2011
9:49 am
Good point. The Hail Boppers lost their lives attempting to do just that.
Educated
May 26th, 2011
10:09 am
I fear that this program is a dead end path for the majority.
Those that are able to drop out of school and actually ‘make it’ are few and far between. We are talking about the Microsoft and Facebook folks. How many Microsoft and Facebook people are there???? Two or three?
While alternative paths will always be around in any situation, they are still ALTERNATIVES and anyone that considers them mainstream is only fooling themselves.
Genie
May 26th, 2011
8:07 pm
Being a genius doesn’t mean you know everything. Incredible innate problem solving skills, yes. Amazing content retention and 100% accurate ligtning speed recall, yes. But mentoring is a form of education which encourages and promotes use of God given skills. It’s not formal education intelligent people have a problem with. It’s social structure, organization & discipline they find confining. Promote special programs for gifted persons who can handle them. But it’s irresponsible to make all students think that a formal education is a waste of time. It’s a vehicle for many of us to achieve our goals.
QE3
May 26th, 2011
9:11 pm
Steve Ballmer sees RED. Visits Pirate’s Cove…..fleeced again!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303654804576347190248544826.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
music to read by:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttQjm-8OITE&feature=related
David Sims
May 26th, 2011
11:04 pm
“…an 18-year-old hoping to extract minerals from asteroids and comets.”
What a dum-dum that fellow must be. Just going to get the minerals from the asteroid belt will cost more, for rocket fuel, than the minerals would be worth on Earth. Asteroids that pass close to Earth go by at a relative speed of about 30,000 meters per second, or more, so there’s the problem of matching speeds to land on the asteroid and then boosting on the way back to Earth.
A while back I had to explain to someone why it isn’t profitable, and will never be profitable, to harvest hydrocarbons from Titan for use on Earth. The most favorable transfer orbit for the cargo ships to follow on the trip back to Earth, allowing them to play catch-up with Earth, and allowing some of the excess velocity to be used for insertion in Low Earth Orbit, still requires the use of rockets to shed about 15,000 meters per second. Which means even if the cargo ship itself is massless, and even if the fuel has no mass either, it would still take more energy to ship a kilogram of hydrocarbons than you could recover by burning the hydrocarbons.
Resources found in space and on other planets will doubtless be handy windfalls to those who live in space and on those other planets. But the transport costs involved in interplanetary trade are usually prohibitively high.
Learn Your Stats
May 27th, 2011
8:08 am
Assigning dropouts to a particularly “ethnic” identity is problematic.
Drop-outs 2009-2010 (source GADOE)
Black: 4.4%
Hispanic: 3.9%
Multi-Ethnic: 3.1%
White 3.0%
State: 3.6%
Clearly dropouts are not a “redneck” problem–so perhaps it is an ignorance problem. Based on my 30 years in Georgia education there is enough blame to go around for everyone.
Reality
May 27th, 2011
8:43 am
@David Sims – There is a major flaw in your post… Logic and education policy in the US do not go together at all!
Don't knock genius
May 27th, 2011
10:09 am
There are plenty of naysayers to all great discoveries. Passion for discovery, willingness to take risks, and the drive to see the project through despite setbacks and criticism is what unites those who succeed, and separates the genius from the merely “gifted”. Thiel is basically doing what all venture capitalists do, investing in risky, but potentially blockbuster innovations. Maybe bloggers on this site are being too limited in their thinking as to what is possible.
Here’s another example…
There is a high school senior my daughter heard speak who has patented an anticancer vaccine technology that exploits the immune system function. He is running clinical trials in conjunction with Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center and with a former SVP of vaccine research at Pfizer, he started a biotechnology company to license and market the technology. He is writing a book with a former editor of the Los Angeles Times.
And he only took second place in the Intel International Science competition last year.
I think this is a great program that, like any venture investment, will have failures, maybe more failures than successes. But how spectacular will be the successes.
JW Deming
May 28th, 2011
3:19 am
That 18 yr old future asteroid miner is no dum dum I assure you. I know him personally. He’s a visionary. He wants to mine asteroids to provide the materials for the construction out in space. He arrived at the idea when he calculated the cost of pulling such materials up out of the earth’s deep gravity well. He wants to ultimately build space colonies. Yes, he will have to make lots of adjustments and, yes, it’s a long-term project, but don’t we want to encourage and support that kind of thinking. John is also a terrific human being who is beyond articulate and an awful lot of fun.
Paddy O
May 28th, 2011
5:20 pm
rednecks are only white folks? i don’t think so. redneckism has adherents in all our self declared demographic categories. that fact that you dropped out indicates you have some redneck in you.