Sam Tarantino dropped out of college and started his own company, Grooveshark.

Peter Thiel thinks higher education will be the next financial bubble.

Why is this in politics? The value of a college education obviously depends on the preferences of the individual.

$1T in student loans. The federal govt has made a college education part of politics.

Where I work its usually its the biggest most worthless dumbasses who are taking night classes to get their masters or phd.

Peter Thiel says tech companies should hire people who can perform, not hire degrees which are often worthless pieces of paper.

The problem with hiring those who can perform is almost all of them will pursue a degree.

Let's just say it: many are.

You don't need a BA in English to pull a decent latte. You don't need a PhD in Medieval Christian Rites to weld together pieces of metal. That isn't to say you don't need skills to do these jobs, but that college won't teach you these skills.

On the other hand, you need at least a BS in biology to run the standard SDS-PAGE gels that all entry-level research assistants are required to do, and you probably need a PhD in Macroeconomic Theory if you plan to run a financial analysis company.

Now, it may just seem like I'm picking on the liberal arts, but come on, the whole point of liberal arts is that you're not learning, you're learning how to learn. There's just far more people who know how to learn than people willing to pay someone to do it.

It's absolutely true that a lot of degrees are worthless. But it's predictable which ones are.

And some dude cut open a painting and found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden in the frame. That someone did something successfully doesn't make it a good idea for everyone to try.

Bill Gates made an assload of money and dropped out of college - okay, but what if he had graduated from Harvard with a bunch of high-powered college buddies? Could he have built Microsoft even faster with VC funding from his roommate's dad's firm? Could he have avoided the anti-trust hearings by calling in favors with his Senator buddies? That is, it's quite possible that, although successful, Bill Gates could have been MORE successful if he had finished college. Or he could have died trying to do an upside-down keg stand his senior year. We'll never know.

What statistics show is that OVERALL, people with higher education earn more.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

And take note that if you consider the number of worthless degrees that exist, that it makes the worthwhile degrees EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE. Imagine what the statistics would look like if you managed to separate "worthless" and "worthwhile" degrees!

It's not super easy to tell who will be a good tech company employee out of high school or without college except for the trivial case when they already are good tech employees. 1 of my friends works for google now and he got the job because he had a good GPA as a math major at a hard program and was likely to perform well at the 60k or whatever intro job he first got. He uses very little/close to none of what he learned in his major at his job, but I don't think it would have been a +EV proposition to hire him based on just his high school record.

There at least a dozen people I know from high school that were locks to be good employees in tech companies. Not surprisingly, almost all of them are. The ones who aren't are ones who pursued other fields. It's not that hard to identify talent that early. It's hard to identify talent that early and convince them not to get a degree.

For people like your friend, sure, college is a good way if you didn't do well in HS to prove yourself. But tech talent is the easiest to find early. That and basketball.

I think the difference in what you and Max are saying is that *you* knew them in HS. Google (or other employers) didn't. I don't think those two posts disagree in the slightest.

1.3 trillion. and like 700 billion in loans outstanding. And we thought the housing collapse was the only thing to **** the economy.

For what? degrees in retarded subjects like minority studies, marketing, women's studies?

No. the problem is, we have able bodied Americans who can walk and breathe working on a computer for a search engine site.

I also cringe every time i meet someone who works for some sort of social networking company. Like really? WTF does that even mean?

It is not the same situation because you know them imo. You obv weren't evaluating these people based on their resumes.... I'm guessing you are basing your opinion on long term discussions with them and being taught similar things and being impressed with how fast they pick it up and how creatively they can push things forward etc. But it probably isn't cost feasible for apple to evaluate potential employees that way.

He "proved" himself in high school. Good GPA... 5's on all the math/physics/CS AP exams, but I think many people who do that still won't be good tech employees. And almost all the ones who won't be also can't finish in the top half of a technical major at a good school.

And of course there is a huge incentive for companies to keep the college structure. Tons of super smart 18 year olds not living with their parents for the first time go on mega tilt their first semester of college. Hiring these people after going through the "holy crap...for the first time in my life nobody will stop me if I drink a whole handle of vodka tues night" phase saves them a ton of money.

There are plenty of positives to just going to college that aren't being included. For instance there is a huge maturity gap between high school and college graduations that is evident.

Part of that is being 4 to 5 years older. With or without the degree, the group who were able to graduate from college were probably smarter than whose who couldn't.