Money talks even louder than college diplomas to Peter Thiel

High-tech billionaire Thiel got famous by putting up money for Facebook. He’s a staunch advocate of economic Darwinism and wears his immense wealth on his sleeve. He created a buzz in September when he unveiled his Thiel Fellowship, a system offering $100,000 grants to youthful students who would rather launch their entrepreneurial ideas than stay in school.

The Thiel Fellowship information

20 entrepreneurs that are younger than 20 could be awarded up to $100,000 in grants with Peter Thiel’s Thiel Fellowship program. Some of the best innovations within the world originated from dropouts from college had “ideas that could not wait until graduation.” This is what Thiel explained in a press release. Thiel himself made billions with PayPal, the Clarium hedge fund and Facebook. He talked about Elon Musk who sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million after dropping out of college to start it.

Thiel’s offer caused a reaction

There have been good and bad responses to the $100,000 offer from Thiel for kids to drop out of school. According to Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, Thiel is just trying encourage kids to be like him since he has such a large ego and also says he package deflects students “from the love of knowledge to the love of money.” On the other hand, Nick Saint at Business Insider said “it’s ridiculous to suggest that most individuals who go to college implement it from the love of knowledge for its own sake.” Jesse Walker at Reason points out that Thiel has a graduate degree, so the Thiel Fellowship college dropouts are not exactly emulating their benefactor.

What higher education thinks of Thiel

Higher education, directly confronted by the Thiel Fellowship, has also weighed in. Thiel was invited by Dr. Jeff Cornwall at Belmont University to come visit the programs they have. Thiel is coming for one reason, states Cornwall. He wants to show Thiel all the students and alumni at the education who came back to get an education after dropping out to pursue their own interests because they knew they needed something else.

Info from

Slate

slate.com/id/2271265/

Business Insider

businessinsider.com/

Reason

reason.com/blog/2010/10/17/jacob-weisberg-vs-the-libertar

Thiel Fellowship

thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content and view=article and id=14:the-thiel-fellowship-20-under-20 and catid=1 and Itemid=16