For bright college students feeling disillusioned by college classes and the less-than-staggering array of career opportunities a higher education can provide, one rich entrepreneur is providing a way out with his 20 Under 20 program.
He’s giving $100,000 to 20 “tech visionaries,” or rather, the geniuses whose potential is held back by the runaround of the college degree. You have to be younger than 20, sitting on the idea for the breakthrough technology of your lifetime, and ready to leave university life behind.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, only geniuses of the Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook, billion-dollar company variety need apply.
The Facebook reference is not a coincidence; the rich entrepreneur investing in this project is Peter Thiel, who was the first angel investor for Mark Zuckerberg. Thiel — a self-made billionaire who made a killing off his own start-up, PayPal — is not quiet about his belief that a path of higher education doesn’t offer what real-world experience does. He believes that postponing the creation of world-changing technology is only doing a disservice to the already bleak economic state.
Be forewarned though, creating and maintaining a company isn’t all six-foot bongs and zip lines rides into the pool — you’re the one who wanted to drop out of college — those selected will work on their projects during a two-year fellowship with the Thiel Foundation. It is uncertain whether fellowship recipients will have to wear tube socks with their sandals.
If someone wants to cure cancer, it seems unlikely that he or she would shelf that project to keep up with the reading for a general studies class.
College isn’t a prison, and most certainly not for the brainpower we’re dealing with. Zuckerberg had already coded Facebook and kept it running for months while still taking classes at Harvard. He also did it for free.
For the country’s best and brightest currently wallowing in universities, is $100,000 really the incentive they need to finally hunker down and flush out that warp drive blueprint that’s been on their mind recently?
I realize America is in a recession, and we aren’t the technology innovators we’ve always been, but throwing money at the problem just seems a little too easy of a solution.
That’s just how Peter Thiel rolls. He has no shortage of cash, so cash is the answer. Thiel dabbles into many interesting endeavors with his philanthropic donations; like Seastanding, plans for a floating, lawless ocean community (think the floating rubble pile in Waterworld, minus the apocalyptic flooding), and the Methuselah Foundation, which pours millions of dollars into research with hopes to prove that humans can live to be 1,000 years old. But, hey, he doesn’t tell me where to spend my money.
And if money is what is takes to inspire these prodigies, then that brings major quality of character issues to light. I cannot honestly say the world needs more egoists of the Steve Jobs or Peter Thiel variety, but capitalism has an interesting way of picking the individuals who get to hold power and wealth.
Defend the socks and sandals look to Sarah at swhitmir@asu.edu
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