Brain Top Off!

High-tech billionaire Thiel got famous by putting up money for Facebook. He’s a brash cheerleader for libertarian fundamentalism. He draws attention to himself by flaunting his wealth. He created a buzz in Sept when he unveiled his Thiel Fellowship, a program offering $100,000 grants to young students who would rather launch their entrepreneurial ideas than stay in school.

Information on the Thiel Fellowship

The Thiel Fellowship program was made by Thiel. He plans to give grants up to $100,000 to 20 entrepreneurs younger than 20. Some of the best innovations in the world came from dropouts from college had “ideas that could not wait until graduation.” This is what Thiel explained in a press release. Thiel, who has made billions with PayPal, Facebook and the Clarium hedge fund, cites such rare examples as Elon Musk who dropped out of graduate education to start Zip2, which he sold to Compaq for $307 million.

What took place after Thiel’s package

Dropping out of school for Thiel’s $100,000 has been a good and bad thing. This is what the responses reflect. Jacob Weisberg at Slate said Thiel is simply feeding his enormous ego by encouraging kids to emulate him and that his offer deflects college students “from the love of knowledge to the love of money.” Then Business Insider’s Nick Saint said, “it’s ridiculous to suggest that most individuals who go to higher education do this from the love of knowledge for its own sake.” Jesse Walker at Reason points out that Thiel has a graduate degree, so the Thiel Fellowship college dropouts aren’t exactly emulating their benefactor.

What a university thinks about Thiel

There are opinions about the Thiel Fellowship program from higher education also. Thiel was invited by Dr. Jeff Cornwall at Belmont University to come visit the programs they have. Cornwall said that there are enough students and alumni entrepreneurs that came back after dropping out because they realized what they were missing, which is why Thiel is coming.

Citations

Slate

slate.com/id/2271265/

Business Insider

businessinsider.com/

Reason

reason.com/blog/2010/10/17/jacob-weisberg-vs-the-libertar

Thiel Fellowship

thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content and view=article and id=14:the-thiel-fellowship-20-under-20 and catid=1 and Itemid=16

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