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Billionaire Dropout Advocate to Teach at Stanford

Billionaire Dropout Advocate to Teach at Stanford
3/13/2012
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Suada Kolovic

In an interesting turn of events, Silicon Valley billionaire and college dropout advocate Peter Thiel will teach a course at Stanford. Apparently, taking a college course is still worthwhile…when he’s the professor.

The PayPal co-founder, whose 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship awarded a group of budding entrepreneurs $100,000 each to dropout and develop innovation companies, will teach a course called “Computer Science 183: Startup” at the university this spring. News has since spread like wildfire and the 250-student course is already oversubscribed, according to Reuters. But not everyone is convinced: Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford’s Rock Center of Corporate Governance, said “It’s hypocritical, but I’m not surprised. The same people who go around bashing education are the most educated. What's he going to do? Tell students, 'When you graduate from my class, drop out right after that?'" Ironically, that idea isn’t too farfetched: Thiel told Reuters through a spokesman, “If I do my job right, this is the last class you’ll ever have to take.” (For more on this story, click here.)

What do you think of Thiel’s stance on earning a college degree? Is it wrong of Thiel to argue that the brightest young minds should venture out on their own and start companies rather than pursue a college degree when he himself holds both a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a law degree from Stanford? Let us know in the comments section.

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