As billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel gets down to the wire in his evaluation of applications for participation in his Thiel Fellowship, the controversial program—which has had 271 participants since its inception in 2011—has come in for renewed scrutiny. It continues to have passionate backers and vociferous critics, and the concept behind it has been the subject of vigorous debate and discussion in the national media.
Those chosen as fellows will drop out of or skip attending a college or university and will instead each receive a grant of $100,000 to start a venture in an evolving field such as financial technology (“fintech”), cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence (AI), driverless vehicles, neuroscience, or the science of longevity; they also receive input from advisers with decades of experience in the relevant field.
The process is highly selective, and some graduates of the program have gone on to become household names, perhaps the most famous being Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum smart-contract-based blockchain that was introduced in July 2015.
With his calls for decentralizing finance, making cryptocurrency more widely understandable and accessible, and giving a greater role to people with promising ideas who may not have followed a traditional route, Mr. Buterin embodies the spirit of Mr. Thiel’s program as much as anyone.
In a September 2023 interview, Mr. Buterin complained about the dominance of institutional investors, the lack of decentralized finance platforms, and the fact that “you need a Ph.D. in Ethereum sciences to actually figure out what’s going on.”
Winners of a Thiel Fellowship will buck longstanding traditions and expectations holding that the way to rise to the top of any field or industry is to first attend a prestigious college for at least four years and then seek an entry-level job in the sector in question and work your way up.
Their refusal to conform to such expectations places them at the heart of a furious debate, in which one side holds that education is indispensable and the other finds contemporary academia to be deeply corrupted by “woke” ideology—like much of the corporate world for which it prepares young minds.
Skeptics and Detractors
The lack of consensus on the merits of the Thiel Fellowship and the desirability of postponing or forgoing secondary education is striking.Jacob Weisberg, chairman of the online publisher The Slate Group, has written that “Thiel’s belief system is a mixture of unapologetic selfishness and social Darwinism”—a sentiment that many in or out of the venture capital space share.
Even in the startup space, some people have deep concerns about the consequences of forgoing a liberal arts education in favor of an exclusive entrepreneurial-minded focus on one or another technical subject.
Scott Rummler, founder of ScalarSight, a New York-based data analytics firm that studies and predicts equity and crypto price movements, voiced reservations about abandoning the pursuit of a well-rounded education in favor of a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
What it means to forgo the social experience of college is a whole other question that advocates of the Thiel Fellowship may not have given proper consideration, he suggested.
“I think that all our institutions need to be reinvented, but an exclusive focus on STEM will dry up innovation. You need to blend art and science and have a great in-person social experience too,” Mr. Rummler told The Epoch Times.
A ‘Very Interesting Experiment’
Although many critics of the Thiel Fellowship echo this view, others point out that becoming a fellow does not necessarily mean forgoing higher education entirely. Rather, it might entail a changing of the order of priorities.“It strikes me as a very interesting experiment, and of course, for all the participants, it wouldn’t prevent them from going back to college if they want to at a later time,” William Kovacic, a professor of law and the director of the Competition Law Center at George Washington University, told The Epoch Times.
An analogue here is the custom in the UK of taking a “gap year” to pursue work or travel before entering a university, he said. This practice is not controversial at all; in fact, some who choose this route find themselves better prepared for the rigors of high-level coursework, according to Mr. Kovacic.
He said he does not view Mr. Thiel’s motives in starting the program as selfish or in any way blind to the imperative of educating young minds. Rather, Mr. Thiel is applying a pedagogical theory at odds with long-prevalent ones.
“Thiel’s assumption is that, at an early age, people have a capacity for true creativity and innovation, without the need for additional formal education to shape the direction in which that creative impulse goes,“ Mr. Kovacic said. ”This might be a good time in a person’s life to test that capacity and develop new ideas and apply them.”
He praised the program for holding out an opportunity to ambitious young inventors and entrepreneurs with “no strings attached.” And he said that the Thiel Fellowship is not necessarily misguided about how best to foster and cultivate their gifts, interests, talents, and abilities.
“The theme of lots of literature about innovation is that we don’t necessarily know where innovation comes from,“ Mr. Kovacic said. ”There are a lot of settings in which people do creative things, and that makes it a subject ripe for experimentation. To say, it’s not necessary to go through a traditional four-year program in walls covered with ivy to have a good idea.”
It is all the more mistaken to view the fellowship and education as mutually exclusive when you consider that some universities are likely to seek out innovators who have made a name for themselves under the fellowship’s auspices, he pointed out.
Of course, the approach is not without its risks, but that is not a reason to discount it, Mr. Kovacic argued.
“I’ve yet to see an area of human endeavor that does not have a downside to it,” he said.
Rejecting Wokeness
Those who criticize Mr. Thiel and the Thiel Fellowship for allegedly giving short shrift to higher education and encouraging profit-minded entrepreneurship instead do not understand the depth of frustration with the state of academia and the ideologically homogenous content of much of the education students receive, according to some experts.That’s the view of Matt Cole, CEO of Strive Asset Management, an Ohio-based investment firm.
Former GOP presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy introduced Strive in January 2022 with the goal of offering an alternative to what he, Mr. Thiel, and others see as the excessive devotion of many firms in the private finance space to environmental, social, and governance investing and diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria.
Those imperatives are at odds with and actively hamper the traditional goal of maximizing returns for shareholders, according to Mr. Thiel and others.
Besides the predominance of woke curricula, some of the courses available to undergraduates are of questionable necessity from a vocational and professional standpoint, according to Mr. Cole.
“I went to Sacramento State University, and in my time there, I can count on one hand the classes that actually prepared me for a professional environment,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”Think about how many classes you have to take as an undergraduate or in an MBA or Ph.D. program. Three or four were helpful to me in my professional career.”
The Overton Window
Mr. Cole acknowledged that many if not most employers still follow highly traditional criteria and may not want to hire someone who does not have a four-year degree.Fortunately, some colleges and universities are expanding their offerings in vocational or vocation-adjacent fields emphasizing internet savvy. But for many, spending four years at a school where a woke curriculum prevails will be of questionable utility in the long run, he said.
More people are beginning to understand the depth of the problems in higher education. Hence, a shift in the “Overton window,” or the range of opinion considered acceptable and mainstream, is underway, according to Mr. Cole.
“I do think that the Overton window has shifted to the point where more people are willing to call this nonsense out. And I think that is one of the first steps that is needed to remove the damage that’s been done in our universities,” he said.
“A lot of the issues there and a lot of the issues in corporate America are related. This is a systemic problem that people deal with, from the moment you go to kindergarten to the moment you retire.”
Mr. Cole said he sees many hopeful signs. He said the backlash against wokeness in higher education that has gained national attention in recent months—particularly after three university presidents delivered widely criticized testimony before Congress on Dec. 5, 2023—has an analogue in controversies such as the recent public disenchantment with Bud Light, whose stock has fallen sharply since it partnered with a transgender influencer.
Mr. Thiel did not respond by press time to a request for comment.
