Thiel's college dropout plan scrutinized by '60 Minutes'

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57437953-93/thiels-college-dropout-plan-scrutinized-by-60-minutes/?tag=mncol

by iProject • 14 years ago

32 44 14 years ago

news.cnet.com

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

"The average plumber makes as much as the average doctor" , really?

I assume somebody is using a very creative definition of one of those.

prezjordan2• 14 years ago

Plumbers make a LOT of money. Source: just knowing plumbers.

rickdangerous1• 14 years ago

right. And its a mistake to conflate, "income" with "reported income for income tax purposes".

josephcooney2• 14 years ago

I know these two plumbers that make a lot of cash. They have gold coins hanging over their heads, just hanging there waiting for them to jump up into them to 'collect' them! And if you think that's weird wait until I tell you about this dinosaur/turtle kind of guy they have to fight from time to time......

DanBC• 14 years ago

In the UK the average for a plumber is about £26,000. But this includes London plumbers, and also includes plumbers with extra skills and certification for gas.

Pay for doctors is complex, because you're including FY1 and FY2 and registrars (a bunch of junior doctors) and also consultants and experienced consultants.

Here's a PDF, which appears to be undated.

(http://www.wwl.nhs.uk/library/foi/classes_of_info/whatwespen...)

swiecki• 14 years ago

what the FUCK is he talking about?

120k for a GP vs 40k for a plumber.

Sources: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/People_with_Jobs_as_Phys...

http://www1.salary.com/Plumber-I-salary.html

I really expect more intelligent comments from a man as accomplished as Thiel.

twelvechairs• 14 years ago

While I don't disagree that its a little bit far fetched to say the two are equal, I don't think it is as far off as you say. 3 points:

- you are comparing a GP or specialist surgeon (average age... maybe 45-50) with a 'plumber I' (average age... maybe 25).

- Plumbers do a lot of cash-in-hand work that will never be declared as 'salary'

- Pay for tradespeople can vary enormously from place to place. I have noticed living in the UK for instance that tradespeople there earn far less than they do on average in the USA or Australia.

temphn2• 14 years ago

How about lifetime income, with the plumber beginning work at age 18 and the doctor starting at age 37, paying off all student loans, with both retiring at 65?

The doctor may come out ahead by 50-55 or so, but certainly not by 37. This holds doubly true if the plumber invests anything at all. 20 years of compound interest on a small base will produce a surprisingly large amount.

stephencanon• 14 years ago

An American GP is typically done with all schooling by age 30. There are specialist surgical fields where training into your mid-30's possible, but the income they command is also vastly higher, and your loans are entirely forgiven after a few more years of academic medicine at that point.

jandrewrogers2• 14 years ago

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has a General Practitioners earning ~3.5x the mean wages of a Plumber. Other countries may differ.

See: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

lhnn• 14 years ago

My friend and I were debating this topic today. We both agree that ideally, a well rounded education in the arts and sciences is optimal. However, is it necessary for the skilled completion of many trades? I don't think so.

I think high school has started to fail as an educational mechanism.

Let's face it: There are many, many stupid people in the world who will never be that bright. Be it from biological or parental reasons, there are many who will not grasp intricate logic, higher math and philosophy, etc.

Also, many students are capable of beginning higher education in high school. Programming, engineering, even medical studies could be started in the teen years of the brightest students. But we're not fulfilling that potential at the moment.

tl;dr high school should be more challenging, and we should accept that not everyone should go to college.

chocolatebunny• 14 years ago

The problem is that nobody is ready to determine their career path at the end of grade school.

vitno• 14 years ago

I was. I've known that CS was what I've wanted to do since about 6th grade. Perhaps more exposure towards careers in required?

knieveltech• 14 years ago

Germany finds your argument unpersuasive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:High_schools_in_German...

notatoad• 14 years ago

Very few people are ready to determine their career path at the end of high school either. Studying a trade doesn't mean that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life. It would be nice, though, if high school graduates could have a choice other than going to university or bagging groceries.

amcintyre• 14 years ago

Sure, but that shouldn't get in the way of making more advanced topics available to kids in late grade school and early high school if they show aptitude for it.

I might not have been ready to choose a career in 9th grade, but I sure as hell would have taken a class on linear algebra, astronomy, computer science, etc. if it had been available. Having the choice to take advanced classes in any interest gives you a much better foundation to start with no matter what career you choose later.

warmwaffles• 14 years ago

You have to realize colleges are businesses too. They are in it to make money. They need higher student counts in order to rake in cash. Anyone else trying to tell you otherwise, is a salesman.

My university did this 4 years ago because they needed a large influx of students to start paying off loans for new buildings etc... SAT score requirements were super low. No application essay required or test that needed to be taken. Our school went from 15k to 36k within 4 years where each student is paying on average 3k a semester. Do the math, the amount of cash going in is disgusting. Not to mention grants.

Anecdotes aside, I completely agree that high school has failed due to lovely legislation, etc... And parents should also be held liable for their children's behavior and education. Each generation's children should be more educated than the former.

commonersense• 14 years ago

Why don't we ask plumbers what they think of a college education? And how it feels to go through life without one. Do wealthy plumbers want their kids to skip college to become wealthy plumbers?

barrkel2• 14 years ago

For people who are good with their hands, don't enjoy academia and don't navigate institutions and bureaucracies well (whether from temperament or lack of access to that kind of knowledge in the family etc.), the trades are a kind of passport. They let you earn a healthy income, find decent work almost anywhere in the world (provided you can get a visa etc.), and ultimately set up an independent business and earn as much as you're willing to work for.

To be frank, I think programming may be better suited to a trade-oriented approach for many people, with only a relatively small academic oriented aspect for things like discrete mathematics.

prezjordan2• 14 years ago

Has he actually paid anyone with his deal yet? Just curious.

durkie• 14 years ago

Yep: http://blog.makezine.com/2012/05/16/young-maker-nabs-thiel-f...

BlackJack• 14 years ago

Yeah, three of my friends are "Thiel fellows". You can check out all of them here: http://www.thielfellowship.org/

hristov• 14 years ago

Does the average plumber make as much as the average doctor? Some quick googling gives the average plumber salary as about 40K. [1] The same site will give you a bunch of doctor's salaries by specialty the lowest one of which seems to be about 170K for a general practitioner.

[1] http://www1.salary.com/Plumber-I-Salary.html

barrkel2• 14 years ago

Most plumbers I've come into contact with were self-employed. They don't meet the description under "Plumber I" at all. Assuming 50K GBP in 2002[1] (I live in London), that's about 100K USD today.

There's no doubt that there's bigger upside in becoming a doctor, and the median doctor almost certainly earns more than the median plumber. But there's also a lot of downside; most doctors I know are stressed and overworked.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2002/nov/03/wageslaves.caree...

jandrewrogers2• 14 years ago

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics collects this data regularly. They are pretty interesting in that they expose many surprising things about relative wages. Annual mean wages (from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm)

- Plumbers: $51,830

- General Practitioner: $177,330

- Chief Executives: $176,550 (added for entertainment value)

Medical specialists can make even more.

rodglez• 14 years ago

He was probably talking about lifetime earnings and not yearly income. If you factor in the 11-19 years of additional training and lost income that doctors go through and make a plumber work the same amount of hours as a doctor, then I bet their lifetime earnings will be close.

Heres a post comparing doctors to UPS drivers, which shows what i'm talking about http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html

JosephRedfern• 14 years ago

I think he (Thiel) is probably right.

nutjob123• 14 years ago

I think that you should explain why you feel this way instead of simply asserting your (possibly) gut reaction.

cj• 14 years ago

I was a finalist for Thiel's 20 under 20 program last month (i was rejected). During interviews, I met the other finalists and current fellows who dropped out of school for this program 1 year ago.

The two main problems I saw:

* Their projects were much more academic than entrepreneurial. About half of the fellows are working on very technical projects like making better CAD software, robotic bioautomation, microorganisms to solve global warming, etc. Many seem like they'd be better served in academic environments

* Most of the current fellows do not seem self-sustaining, which may become problematic at the end of their fellowship

IMO it's a good program for the few that are working on startups and need some cash to be able to drop out of school, but I worry that it's doing a disservice to the academic oriented fellows.

jedberg2• 14 years ago

The problem with college education in America is that we have stigmatized vocational school.

Some people just aren't meant to be academics, and that's fine. They will never excel at school. So let's teach them something that is useful to society like plumbing or electrical of HVAC.

And now for an anecdote: I was paying a plumber for a job once, and after I handed him $1000 for the 4 hours of work he had done, he told me that his kid (who had been his apprentice for the job) was in college on a sports scholarship, but planned on taking over the family plumbing business upon graduation because it was far more lucrative than anything he'd be able to get with his college degree in humanities.

veyron• 14 years ago

The colleges themselves are partially to blame for the stigmatization of vocational schools. It's in their economic interest to funnel students through the system even if it's not relevant for their careers.

throwaway55-332• 14 years ago

The high wages of the plumber are naturally a function of supply and demand. They are often in part a result of a dearth or even a complete absence of competition.

If there were an overabundance of available skilled plumbers in every community, the wages might drop.

Needless to say, in any given US community there is often a shortage of available skilled plumbers but rarely a shortage of young people with college degrees.

PayPal, Thiel's claim to fame, had one competitor: X.com. And they merged.

jedberg2• 14 years ago

This is a fair point -- if vocational school were more widely promoted, there would be more people with vocational training and the wages would go down. However, I still think it would settle into a reasonable level of compensation, and regardless, there will always be a base level of demand to be met as long as we keep using electricity and indoor plumbing.

Dylanlacey• 14 years ago

Vocational education is similarly maligned in Australia, but for a very real reason: It's terribly implemented.

There is a big push for all training of any type to be delivered by a TAFE (Technical and Further Education) institute. Scouts Queensland is now a registered TAFE so that their training is recognized by external bodies. My Celebrancy training came from a TAFE, as did my first aid (Even though that TAFE was the Queensland State Ambulance Service).

The biggest problem with the system is that the requirements for testing are TERRIBLE. Certain requirements have to be met so questions are constructed to meet them. Multiple choice is rife, as is simply posing the requirement as a question. They're badly written. I had to submit an assignment along the lines of "Describe your attitudes towards the values and commitments of marriage" with no further instructions. No guide to length or format or whether having the "wrong" attitude would fail me. This is a very common experience.

There's also a lack of importance attached to correctness. If you fail, you get to try again, with no penalties, until the end of the semester. Your only possible marks are "Competent" and "Not Yet Competent". It's very common for material to be wildly out of date or simply incorrect.

The end result of all of this is that TAFE is generally seen as a joke AND a requirement for many skills and certificates.

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

>"We have a bubble in education, like we had a bubble in housing...everybody believed you had to have a house, they'd pay whatever it took," says Thiel. "Today, everybody believes that we need to go to college, and people will pay -- whatever it takes."

And now we have a bubble in technology, and investors need naive kids churning out products so they can catch lightning in a bottle. And they'll pay whatever it takes.

mkramlich• 14 years ago

I think you're both right. Thiel is right that most folks don't need to go to college and it's horribly over-priced, etc. You're right that we have a lot of investors with a large personal self-ish financial interest in having as many developers and engineers, especially younger/cheaper ones, available to execute on their startup ideas and/or to "invest" (buy lottery tickets on) in them. So you're both right. No contradiction.

SudarshanP• 14 years ago

But look at it from a student's point of view. In case he gets a useless education and a huge loan, the student's life is ruined. If he gets some money from a "me too angel" and works on a non idea and fails... he still gains valuable experience and knows more about the real world and programming and a wealthy guy becomes a little less wealthy. From a student's point of view this is probably the best time to learn and let some one else foot the bill ;-)

temphn2• 14 years ago

Does the average plumber make more than the average college graduate? That is the real question. If it's even close, especially after accounting for student loans, that is an indictment of the current higher ed system.

christianbryant• 14 years ago

I tested out of High School a year early and moved to Los Angeles to focus on only what I wanted to do: Act, write, direct. I'm probably not representative of everyone in technology without a college degree, but nevertheless, when I realized Dream #1 wasn't happening, I tool my tech experience in retail to the start-up world, and then settled in to a decent career, which is only getting better with time. Part of me agrees with all this, but with a grain of salt. It's not the path for everyone. Put me in a room of geeks and I can hold my own; put me in a group of more well-rounded folks, fans of opera and the like (tongue in cheek, folks), I couldn't hold my own and would be bored to death. But that's not just due to personal taste, but a total lack of exposure.

My mother never encouraged me to go to school and I spent all my time in my room reading SciFi and Fantasy novels. But I was very smart, and now that I have a kid of my own, I see that same intelligence in her and, guess what, I'm sending her to college. No matter what. She'll have opportunities to do great things, and I wouldn't fault her for pausing college to work on a start-up company, but I would fault her for not finishing school, even if it took a decade or two. See, I want her to be able to sit in that room with all the socialites and hold her own, as easily as she could in a room full of geeks. That said, until the United States improves its view of education and makes some radical changes, my daughter will NOT be going to college in the States. Maybe University of Helsinki? :)

Good luck to all the Thiel Fellows. I think it is needed, for both an _alternative_ and as a reminder to folks in the States that there is a serious problem with the education system...

dbecker• 14 years ago

People frequently talk about college as if you can only go when you are 18.

If a budding entrepreneur skips college at 18, he can still go back later.

Skipping college at 18 still may not be the right thing to do... but these conversations frequently overplay the finality of the decision.

got2surf• 14 years ago

I'm commenting as a high school senior who has a few start up plans and is still going to college this fall.

First off, I take fault with the entire "college is overpriced" deal - that's only without financial aid. Harvard costs 60k sticker, but costs around 20k or so after financial aid (with 2/3 of people receiving aid). If you make 150k a year, you'll pay 10% of your income on tuition, it's not a massive 60k expense for most people.

But secondly, life's always about thinking, and it's always going to be about thinking. For purposes of developing education, nothing develops thinking like college, literally. We have no other social institution that fosters the same long-term interaction, learning, and application as college. But even more importantly, college is crucial for general life development, for learning about the world, meeting girls/guys, and all of the misadventures that we tend to take lessons from.

I have over 2000 hours of research in an emerging field, and I'm interested in starting a company on it, but it's not worth skipping college over. It may be worth taking a gap year (which seems more in line with the original Thiel philosophy) but I'm sure I'll have time to fit in a budding startup after classes. If the startup looks promising, and becomes less risky, then sure, it's worth taking a break from college. But until that point, college is a great investment; if you're going to invest in anything, why not invest in yourself?

But with all that being said.. the Thiel application has a few major similarities to the college app process. Thiel recipients probably did well in school, maybe in math/science competitions, have good ideas and are communicative. These skills probably got them into top schools (Ivy/MIT/Stanford). But because the Thiel program is a selection process in itself, it still provides some guidance and is at least better than an unstructured 4 years of skipping college.

Oh and one more thought: people will always care about credentials, which prove that you can do what you say you do. Starting a company, participating in Thiel, or going to a top school all count as credentials - but dropping out of college doesn't guarantee any of those three, and in that sense, is a very risky decision.

Thiel's college dropout plan scrutinized by '60 Minutes'

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