Why Peter Thiel Is Right...To A Point
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
There's a discussion going on in America right now about whether higher education is really "worth it." And it's pernicious because it involves a certain amount of truth, but then takes the reasoning behind it right off a cliff.
First, let me just clarify this as somebody who has worked in the trenches of human resources and knows what high-level employers look for: YES. Yes it is. Especially if your interests are specific. Don't listen to CEOs, or paid consultants, or retired professors with grudges. They have chips on their shoulders and don't understand how hiring somebody actually works, because they don't have to. Listen to the guy who spent four years of his life finding and hiring people: a college degree is worth it.
Let's deal with the truths first: yes, except in very specific cases, a "name brand" degree is overrated. A Harvard B.A. isn't worth more than a UMass B.A. But this isn't news. Those legions of colleges that are fully accredited and give out diplomas every year didn't come into existence overnight. If a sixteen-year-old came to me and asked me what to do, I'd say "Go to a cheap school for your undergrad, and work your ass off. Then, if you need graduate school, look at the bigger schools."
The key thing you learn at college isn't a trade, which is something people have lost sight of: it's reasoning skills and communication skills. College graduates are highly valued because even the most retarded of them still know how to write an email and speak fairly well.
You run the numbers, it's fairly simple: about a third of the country has a B.A. Of those working, 5% of those are unemployed. That's stayed steady through the entire recession.
Furthermore, we are facing what can only be called a terrifying hiring crunch. Go ahead, look up the hiring problems the healthcare industry is having right now. Then look up the average age of a nurse: 46. And that's ONE industry. I know from personal experience that a lot of people in the biotech industry are absolutely terrified of the next twenty years because not even China and India can turn out enough people to meet their needs. I once expressed an interest in biology to a recruiter in idle chat: he sent me a complete breakdown of scholarships and incentives his company offered, and even said he'd talk to a school to figure out how to transfer my graduate credits. Programming? Just as intense.
We are shifting over, increasingly, to industries where a high level of education (not a college education, true, but a high level of education) is required. For those twenty startups that Thiel is funding to succeed, they need workers. They might need a hell of a lot of workers.
I'm not sure what's going to happen. 2013 is the flashpoint; it's when the Boomers start retiring en masse, unless the retirement age is moved to 72 (that's my personal target: I'm leaving room for it to be moved further as a lot can happen in medicine in four decades). But I know that whether rich guys with an opinion like it or not, they're going to need better educated workers.
In fact, they might wind up paying for them.
There's a discussion going on in America right now about whether higher education is really "worth it." And it's pernicious because it involves a certain amount of truth, but then takes the reasoning behind it right off a cliff.
First, let me just clarify this as somebody who has worked in the trenches of human resources and knows what high-level employers look for: YES. Yes it is. Especially if your interests are specific. Don't listen to CEOs, or paid consultants, or retired professors with grudges. They have chips on their shoulders and don't understand how hiring somebody actually works, because they don't have to. Listen to the guy who spent four years of his life finding and hiring people: a college degree is worth it.
Let's deal with the truths first: yes, except in very specific cases, a "name brand" degree is overrated. A Harvard B.A. isn't worth more than a UMass B.A. But this isn't news. Those legions of colleges that are fully accredited and give out diplomas every year didn't come into existence overnight. If a sixteen-year-old came to me and asked me what to do, I'd say "Go to a cheap school for your undergrad, and work your ass off. Then, if you need graduate school, look at the bigger schools."
The key thing you learn at college isn't a trade, which is something people have lost sight of: it's reasoning skills and communication skills. College graduates are highly valued because even the most retarded of them still know how to write an email and speak fairly well.
You run the numbers, it's fairly simple: about a third of the country has a B.A. Of those working, 5% of those are unemployed. That's stayed steady through the entire recession.
Furthermore, we are facing what can only be called a terrifying hiring crunch. Go ahead, look up the hiring problems the healthcare industry is having right now. Then look up the average age of a nurse: 46. And that's ONE industry. I know from personal experience that a lot of people in the biotech industry are absolutely terrified of the next twenty years because not even China and India can turn out enough people to meet their needs. I once expressed an interest in biology to a recruiter in idle chat: he sent me a complete breakdown of scholarships and incentives his company offered, and even said he'd talk to a school to figure out how to transfer my graduate credits. Programming? Just as intense.
We are shifting over, increasingly, to industries where a high level of education (not a college education, true, but a high level of education) is required. For those twenty startups that Thiel is funding to succeed, they need workers. They might need a hell of a lot of workers.
I'm not sure what's going to happen. 2013 is the flashpoint; it's when the Boomers start retiring en masse, unless the retirement age is moved to 72 (that's my personal target: I'm leaving room for it to be moved further as a lot can happen in medicine in four decades). But I know that whether rich guys with an opinion like it or not, they're going to need better educated workers.
In fact, they might wind up paying for them.