College is a waste of time
June 3, 2011 1:23 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Dale Stephens dropped out of college, was awarded a $100,000 fellowship
- He says college rewards conformity and competition, not collaboration, theory
- Grads carrying heavy burden: College loan debt will top $1 trillion this year, he writes
- Stephens: With life experience, creativity, Internet tools, college degrees unnecessary
Editor's note: Dale J. Stephens is a 19-year-old entrepreneur leading UnCollege, a social movement supporting self-directed higher education and building RadMatter, a platform to demonstrate talent. He is among the first recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, an initiative by venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel that gives 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years old $100,000 to fund their projects.
(CNN) -- I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution. For me, that's not an issue; I believe higher education is broken.
I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.
All I can say is "Good luck, asshole!"
ReplyDeleteCertainly college is not for everybody and the costs are spiraling out of control, BUT it isn't some sort of frakking "conspiracy" to keep the brilliant 19-year-olds down.
Thiel has his ideas on the distribution of talent in the pool of 19 year olds and we have ours.
ReplyDeleteWe've seen plenty more 19 year olds than he has and I'll bet his pool is a lot shallower than he thinks.
"I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application."
ReplyDeleteTranslation:
"I left college because somebody gave me $100,000 to leave college."
Are you kidding me? Everything he says college doesn't reward is EXACTLY what I got out of college. I didn't go to Harvard or Yale, I went to a very small regional liberal arts school. I learned every single one of those qualities: collaboration, imagination, independence, and learning and theory. Of course, I wasn't a business major, I took learning seriously, and my professors fell over themselves to help me find new projects and new opportunities to learn. Essentially this article boils down to: Snowflake, you're doing college wrong.
ReplyDeleteSome people can be quite successful without a rigorous academic background. The independent thought and self-directed work it requires is not commonly found, and the opportunity to apply it well is even rarer.
ReplyDeleteI will be perfectly happy with a generation that believes at 19 you should do something other than college. The successes will invent some new technological toy and the failures will be a bit more mature when they come back to college at 25-30. And all the in-between folks that would have meh'd their way through with god-awful work won't show up. They'll meh their way through life in the service industry, and I'll only have to deal with them when the plumbing breaks.
What percent of the un-students' parents are entrepreneurs or small business owners themselves? What percent of the un-students come from middle-class or better backgrounds? Thought so.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I will try to contain my disappointment that this young man will never be one of my students...
ReplyDeleteReading this guy's article (assuming he wrote it himself), I find myself agreeing with him. College doesn't have much to offer him. He already knows how to write clearly, how to analyze social institutions around him, how to cite statistics and use them in a responsible way. Most of the skills I teach in my classroom he has already learned.
ReplyDeleteBut we always assume that whatever WE see, all people surely must see. And sweetheart, very very few of your peers have a handle on the concepts, critical thinking, and writing ability in your arsenal.
We don't actually know whether or not he can write well. What we know is that CNN has a staff of copyeditors and proofreaders. And, no doubt, they went to college.
ReplyDeleteI would be very, very happy if the UnCollege movement caught on and the kids who thought like this stayed out of my effing classroom.
ReplyDeleteReading this guy's article (assuming he wrote it himself), I find myself agreeing with him. College doesn't have much to offer him.
ReplyDeleteHow about exposure to ideas, books, music, political philosophies, and cultures that otherwise he will miss? There's something to be said about a liberal arts education that produces a person more aware of the world around them. Somehow I have the uneasy feeling all he's ever read is "Atlas Shrugged" and "Lord of the Rings." I hope I'm wrong..
Yeah, I'm still for it. Enterpreneur college for the young turks, trade school for the honestly not academic but still talented, and mandatory 2-year civil service for everyone else.
ReplyDeleteThen college for whoever is left still wanting it, after age 20.
But I also agree with noriver: dude, either you are doing college wrong or you chose the wrong college.
Great! Not everyone needs college, but not everyone is Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or any one of a VERY SMALL percentage of dropouts who have gone on to be enormously successful. Just like not every high school kid who shoots hoops is going to get recruited into the NBA.
ReplyDeleteMy Other Half is one of the smartest people I've ever met--and a college dropout who laments frequently how limited the job opportunities are because the degree remains unfinished. We have two young children and it's unlikely that the degree will be completed anytime soon. My OH's current job does not require a degree, but it doesn't pay that well either--not enough to support us, which makes the summer months rather challenging.
As my Other Half frequently says whenever we pass those people who are paid to hold up signs at tax time, "Stay in school, kids!"