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Peter Thiel has a fascinating perspective related to top universities and their enrollments: > "You could say that it's an investment good, where you're invest
by next_xibalba 5y ago
Peter Thiel has a fascinating perspective related to top universities and their enrollments:
> "You could say that it's an investment good, where you're investing in the future, or a consumption good, a four-year party. I think that most parents and students think of college as an insurance policy, this ever more expensive insurance so that students don't fall through the growing cracks in our society"
> "It's not an insurance policy at all. It's a crazy tournament. It's a zero-sum tournament. If you were the president of Harvard or Stanford and you wanted to get a lynch mob of students, alumni, and faculty to come after you, what you should say is something like this: We live in this much larger, more global world. We offer this great education to everybody. So we're going to double or triple our enrollment over the next 15 to 20 years. And people would all be furious, because the value of the degree comes from massive exclusion. And what you're really running is something like a Studio 54 night club that's got an incredibly long line outside and a very small number of people let inside. It's branded as positive sum, everybody can learn, but the reality is that it is deeply zero sum."
- andreyk 5y agoThis is an absurdly cynical view. For one, Stanford admissions are growing over time (even if admit rate is dropping) - https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-... Two, growing class size this much is not easy, as additional housing is required. Three, part of the value proposition of elite schools is to be surrounded by smart ambitious people, and to have the prestige associates with the school to be more competitive in the future. Thiel is right this is partially bad, but realistically competition is inherently part of capitalism. The same is true of top tech companies - their value proposition is not just an absurd salary, but the prestige of working at eg Google and having that on your resume. And fourth, Stanford offers a lot of online certificates, and has SCPD admissions. Georgia Tech has a whole online Masters degree that has had thousands if not tens of thousands of admits. The trend is for education to be more accessible, not less. Granted, I'm biased as someone who went to Georgia Tech and Stanford. But this take by Thiel is entirely reductive, even if it does have a grain of truth to it. Much of life is zero sum (what is job hunting if not that) and while it's not ideal, it's silly to single out elite colleges as being bad for it.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoI think your reading a little too much into the quotes. As I understand, he's correcting - or at least explicating - a mistaken assumption commonly promoted by parents to their children, school counselors to their students, and politicians to their constituents. He's not singling out top-tier academic institutions, but doing the opposite by demonstrating that they're no different from the Olympics. Many will enter, few will win. With that said, I disagree that much of the world is a zero-sum game. You couldn't have innovation if that was the case.
- dnissley 5y agoI think you're misreading your source. Didn't run all the numbers, but the bars represent total applicants and the green lines represent overall admit rate. Graduating class year 2024: 47498 applicants * 4% admit rate = ~1900 students admitted Graduating class year 2017: 38828 applicants * 6% admit rate = ~2330 students admitted Seems to be going in the wrong direction, but that's only two data points.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoHe is not exactly an example of how to make it without stamp of approval from the elite. Stanford, high level clerkship, high level jobs. He played the game extremely well until he decided to jump. If anything his early career demonstrates that it's worth to build the perfect resume.
- wallscratch 5y agoSure, but I don’t think that devalues his criticism.
- wolverine876 5y agoYet Columbia is growing rapidly, per the article, and there has been no such reaction. Is there any evidence supporting this claim?