{"id":8129,"date":"2011-04-12T10:38:54","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T14:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studentfreepress.net\/?p=8129"},"modified":"2015-05-28T17:24:12","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T21:24:12","slug":"libertarian-entrepreneur-peter-thiel-predicts-higher-ed-bubble-will-burst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/libertarian-entrepreneur-peter-thiel-predicts-higher-ed-bubble-will-burst\/","title":{"rendered":"Libertarian entrepreneur Peter Thiel predicts higher ed bubble will burst"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent article<\/a> on Peter Thiel–a libertarian activist and financial backer of Facebook who was depicted in The Social Network<\/em>–lets his strong views on higher ed be known:<\/p>\n

Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. \u201cA true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,\u201d he says. \u201cEducation may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It\u2019s like telling the world there\u2019s no Santa Claus.\u201d …<\/p>\n

Like any good bubble, this belief\u2013 while rooted in truth\u2013 gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life.\u00a0 It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. \u201cIt\u2019s what you\u2019ve been told all your life, and it\u2019s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,\u201d Thiel says. …<\/p>\n

But Thiel\u2019s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it\u2019s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people\u2019s best hope for a better life on\u00a0 something that is by definition exclusionary. \u201cIf Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it\u2019s usually a justification for doing something mean. It\u2019s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they\u2019d be fine. Maybe that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thiel is offering investments of $100,000 to each of 20 students who decide to start their own businesses rather than finishing college. Facebook, after all, wasn’t founded on a college degree.<\/p>\n

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