Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and holder of two degrees from Stanford, is throwing another brick at elite education, suggesting the money is better spent building your own startup. He says spending the $100k on a startup is far more educational than anything you can learn from a top university, because “higher education today is in a ‘crazy bubble’ that, like a bad mortgage, saddles students with tuition debt often for little in return.” In order to hasten elite education’s evolution (or extinction), he’s putting his money where his mouth is and is offering $100,000 grants to students at top universities to drop out of college and launch a startup of their choosing.
Here’s an excellent article on MIT’s Technology Review that covers the grant in more detail.