I'm of the opinion that university is good for everyone, even people who don't strictly need it for their jobs. Democracy only works if you have an educated public that values critical thinking.
Thiel has openly said that democracy has become incompatible with his notion of freedom (and seems to prefer the latter given the conflict), so its not hard to see why he might not support something essential to the function of democracy.
At what cost?
Thiel never says "university is a waste of time", his position is that it's often not a sound investment of time and money, which is uncontroversial, given the number of graduates who incur 6-figure debts and find themselves to be unemployable.
In your judgement, what is the threshold (in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of inescapable debt) at which university ceases to be "good for everybody"?
What I understood was more like it's a waste of money, considering the outrageous price you pay for it and it's ROI.
Of course university is good for everyone, but if it comes along with a huge debt? He blamed the education system for bubbling up the prices and not providing enough value, to the point alternatives should be considered.
I really liked his point that people should stop believing university is all you need to be successful in life and blindly throw money at them because they have no better idea.
IIRC, he was paying people to run with their startup idea rather than wait until after they finished college. It was far different than just paying random students to drop out.
> Democracy only works if you have an educated public that values critical thinking.
That doesn't mean that the university is good. Do the universities really teach people to value critical thinking? Or do they teach them to value thinking that supports the currently prevailing viewpoint? Too often, it's the latter.
Note well: I'm not a Thiel fan or supporter. What he did to Gawker was both dirty and hypocritical.
The sooner we detach a degree from the concept of “being educated,” the better.
College degree != educated
Many educated people have a college degree but they aren’t educated by virtue of that degree. My dad isn’t a high school graduate who was a precision machinist who built high tolerance devices for NASA. He worked with Dr. Smalley at Rice University and built some incredible things — stuff that led to Smalley’s Nobel prize. He’s hardly uneducated and unable to think critically.
Education IS important, but college is just a means, not an end.
It's pretty well understood that both Gates' and Zuckerberg's success is owed in part to their parents' means (pun intended) and what it afforded them early in life, including attendance at elite private schools and living in prosperous, stable communities, and attending, though not graduating from, an elite university.
They are hardly examples of poorer people becoming big successes without college.