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Well, it didn't say "Everyone Paul Graham knows in Silicon Valley says that, exactly." In an attention-deprived environment, we write in shorthand sometimes. I

Well, it didn't say "Everyone Paul Graham knows in Silicon Valley says that, exactly." In an attention-deprived environment, we write in shorthand sometimes. I don't have to tell you everything I read that led me to that belief, you can use your own judgement and look it up yourself. You know I sat in the audience when you interviewed Zuck a couple of months ago, and I listened carefully to what you and he said about his experience at Harvard. Interestingly, I was at Harvard at the same time, and I know that a lot of the stories he's telling are not true, about what the adults were doing there at at the time. I was one of the adults. We were doing some pretty important stuff too, it turns out. :-) Anyway the point is this -- we can all learn from each other. It would be great if you read past the first thing that turned you off and listen to the whole schpiel. I gave you and Zuck that much, I spent a few hours of my life to find out what you thought, even though I was sure a fair amount of it was wrong.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Dave, it would be more accurate to say that a lot has been written about the relative merits of a college education with respect to startups, but that is not evidence for a claim that "Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste." It would be accurate to say that the question has come up, and been answered many times. As a simple exercise, scan CrunchBase, take the founders, scrape LinkedIn, and find the ones without college degrees. The bulk of people who are funded have college degrees, and if you assume that 'funding' is a proxy for 'values' then by that simple experiment your claim would be disproved. It would be accurate to say that certain investment agencies, of which Peter Thiel is perhaps the most visible, have decided to weight the value a college education less than other investors, but Peter doesn't represent the "Silicon Valley" any more than Paul does. The article you link [1] doesn't say anything about not valuing a college education, rather it says a lot about a college trying to maximize its endowment. Your comment about Harvard wanting to "participate in the success of the next Gates ..." isn't even in the linked text, you called it out of some other unmentioned source. It is a perfectly reasonable argument to make that the people who advocate that a college degree has no value, are wrong. But "Silicon Valley" is not those people. [1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-seas-investment/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-...

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Dave, it would be more accurate to say that a lot has been written about the relative merits of a college education with respect to startups, but that is not evidence for a claim that "Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste." It would be accurate to say that the question has come up, and been answered many times. As a simple exercise, scan CrunchBase, take the founders, scrape LinkedIn, and find the ones without college degrees. The bulk of people who are funded have college degrees, and if you assume that 'funding' is a proxy for 'values' then by that simple experiment your claim would be disproved. It would be accurate to say that certain investment agencies, of which Peter Thiel is perhaps the most visible, have decided to weight the value a college education less than other investors, but Peter doesn't represent the "Silicon Valley" any more than Paul does. The article you link [1] doesn't say anything about not valuing a college education, rather it says a lot about a college trying to maximize its endowment. Your comment about Harvard wanting to "participate in the success of the next Gates ..." isn't even in the linked text, you called it out of some other unmentioned source. It is a perfectly reasonable argument to make that the people who advocate that a college degree has no value, are wrong. But "Silicon Valley" is not those people. [1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-seas-investment/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-...