Thiel Fellowship [1]
With all of this self-directed learning, alternative routes to college have made a large surge to become a viable option to not attending college. Right now, these have been the talk around many news sites and blogs. There is controversy over the importance of going to college and not dropping out. Dropping out to many is preserved to the Mark Zukerbergs or Steve Jobs. One organization's goal is for every student to at least ask the question if higher education is the road for them. Uncollege is the name of the organization making strides in bring this question to the for front of student's minds everywhere. It can only help to pounder truly why attending college is the right decision or not. Many students go to college as an innate next step with out even thinking about the implications. Walking around campus, sometimes I feel as if I am surrounded by zombies that are not cognitively aware of their decision to go to college. Most will realize junior and senior year that hey I am going to be in the business wold soon and I have no clue what I want to do. Colleges are sucking the money out of these students and creating the largest student loan debt we have ever seen.
Alternative routes are preaching on the outrageous tuition cost that colleges demand for students with little or no guarantee of a job after graduating. Oklahoma State is a prime example with our computer science department. They are not accredited, have no advisor, or senior capstone course. This has to say something to its students about their concern for the undergraduates graduating.
Entrepreneurship has become a bit of a fad and is spreading like a disease. Students are dropping like flys out of top universities some even Ivy leaguers. The best place to learn business is to run a business. Hands on experience will out perform reading a textbook on it any day. One argument that those who “drop or stop out” is that school will be there when they are done. Let's say they completely fail and fall flat on their face the school is not going any where. Sometimes these markets are open at the right time and huge success can happen. Snapchat came out of a simple project for class and lead to a business worth billions by Facebook's standard.
This begs the question do you need to go to college to do want you want to accomplish. Students need to stare in the face the finished product they want from their college experience and ask if it can be obtained elsewhere for the same outcome. Asking these questions will allow students to better appreciate why they are in college and take more advantage of their time spent in school. Peter Thiel challenged students to ask if college was providing them what they need to execute their ideas and passions.
Thus, the Thiel Fellowship was born. 100,000 dollars is used to help fund these students ideas. However, many are quick to say that this solution is for the top percentile and will not work for others. “I think the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade is Peter Thiel’s special program to bribe people to drop out of college,” said former Harvard President Larry Summers (Ferenstien). Since it is early on it most of the cohorts it is hard to say what the full effect of this program will have on these young adults. Ferenstien would agree with me on this statement as he close out his TechCrunch article saying “the criticism, in the end, may be premature.” Another route is Enstitute which believes in 21st century apprenticeships. They want to place students in high rising startups under the wing of a stellar co-founder or CEO. I applied and got all the way until the 6th round. However, at the last possible moment they shut down the entire application round because of restructuring. Now they have “relaunched” and are shortening the time span. I have some friends that were fellows in the first class and have mixed feelings about Enstitute.
For Computer Science majors, there is a craze around developer camps. Recently, they have come under investigation for standards and curriculum. Two of the more popular ones are Dev Bootcamp and Hack Reactor. I applied and was accepted into Hack Reactor as well. The process was extensive and rigorous. I was unable to fork up the nearly 17,000 tuition asking price. Some nights I find myself asking if money was not an issue would I take that leap of faith. I struggle with if I am ready to jump full into an alternative path because I speak out about the downfalls of college. This is an inner struggle that continues today. Stokes speaks on the need to fill this gap between graduates and readiness for the business world. We come out of college and some students do not have the skills they need to be successful.
Uncollege offers a Gap Year to help students learn about themselves and see where they want to go. As more of these routes arise, questions are being pointed towards higher education and the standards are rising. Minerva Project is an entire school option that is going to challenge higher ed. They have some interesting insights on how they will change higher education.
The response of higher ed institutions to all of these alternative routes will be so pivotal. One action that they will need to avoid is to simply ignore that anything is taking place. Tuition will hopefully go down because of these other programs rising. Another important opinion is that of the business world and seeing how they accept those without a college degree. This will define the alternative route paths on weather or not students can receive jobs afterwards.
Alternative routes are preaching on the outrageous tuition cost that colleges demand for students with little or no guarantee of a job after graduating. Oklahoma State is a prime example with our computer science department. They are not accredited, have no advisor, or senior capstone course. This has to say something to its students about their concern for the undergraduates graduating.
Entrepreneurship has become a bit of a fad and is spreading like a disease. Students are dropping like flys out of top universities some even Ivy leaguers. The best place to learn business is to run a business. Hands on experience will out perform reading a textbook on it any day. One argument that those who “drop or stop out” is that school will be there when they are done. Let's say they completely fail and fall flat on their face the school is not going any where. Sometimes these markets are open at the right time and huge success can happen. Snapchat came out of a simple project for class and lead to a business worth billions by Facebook's standard.
This begs the question do you need to go to college to do want you want to accomplish. Students need to stare in the face the finished product they want from their college experience and ask if it can be obtained elsewhere for the same outcome. Asking these questions will allow students to better appreciate why they are in college and take more advantage of their time spent in school. Peter Thiel challenged students to ask if college was providing them what they need to execute their ideas and passions.
Thus, the Thiel Fellowship was born. 100,000 dollars is used to help fund these students ideas. However, many are quick to say that this solution is for the top percentile and will not work for others. “I think the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade is Peter Thiel’s special program to bribe people to drop out of college,” said former Harvard President Larry Summers (Ferenstien). Since it is early on it most of the cohorts it is hard to say what the full effect of this program will have on these young adults. Ferenstien would agree with me on this statement as he close out his TechCrunch article saying “the criticism, in the end, may be premature.” Another route is Enstitute which believes in 21st century apprenticeships. They want to place students in high rising startups under the wing of a stellar co-founder or CEO. I applied and got all the way until the 6th round. However, at the last possible moment they shut down the entire application round because of restructuring. Now they have “relaunched” and are shortening the time span. I have some friends that were fellows in the first class and have mixed feelings about Enstitute.
For Computer Science majors, there is a craze around developer camps. Recently, they have come under investigation for standards and curriculum. Two of the more popular ones are Dev Bootcamp and Hack Reactor. I applied and was accepted into Hack Reactor as well. The process was extensive and rigorous. I was unable to fork up the nearly 17,000 tuition asking price. Some nights I find myself asking if money was not an issue would I take that leap of faith. I struggle with if I am ready to jump full into an alternative path because I speak out about the downfalls of college. This is an inner struggle that continues today. Stokes speaks on the need to fill this gap between graduates and readiness for the business world. We come out of college and some students do not have the skills they need to be successful.
Uncollege offers a Gap Year to help students learn about themselves and see where they want to go. As more of these routes arise, questions are being pointed towards higher education and the standards are rising. Minerva Project is an entire school option that is going to challenge higher ed. They have some interesting insights on how they will change higher education.
The response of higher ed institutions to all of these alternative routes will be so pivotal. One action that they will need to avoid is to simply ignore that anything is taking place. Tuition will hopefully go down because of these other programs rising. Another important opinion is that of the business world and seeing how they accept those without a college degree. This will define the alternative route paths on weather or not students can receive jobs afterwards.
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Video
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_YR7sfXjl0