PayPal Co-Founder Gives $100,000 to 24 Students to Drop Out of College

It’s not too often that someone will encourage someone else to drop out of college, and it’s even rarer for someone to encourage twenty-four people to do it. Leave it to Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and holder of a B.A. in philosophy and J.D. in law, to be the one to do it.

On behalf of the Thiel Foundation, 24 students were chosen as part of the “20 Under 20” program to receive a $100,000 cash infusion to help them get a head-start on accomplishing some innovative things. You might notice that 24 isn’t quite 20, but there’s a reason behind that. According to the head of the Thiel Foundation, James O’Neill, choosing 24 was difficult, while choosing 20 would have been “impossible”.

The reason for this sort of program? James continued, “we hope they will help young people everywhere realize that you don’t need credentials to launch a company that disrupts the status quo.” As earning a degree to some people could be considered the first step to success, this mindset might come off as a bit striking. It’s even more so when you learn that of these 24 students, some left the most prestigious schools out there.

No matter the side of the fence you’re on regarding attending college, this move on behalf of Thiel is hard to surmise. Is he saying that there’s little value in attending college, despite having been well-educated himself? Or did he and his foundation find special cases where the potential in people is obvious, and a boost would be all that’s needed to help get them started?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Thiel thinks ideas can develop in a start-up environment much faster than at a university. And the project is also intended to question the idea of higher education. Thiel told TechCrunch in April that the United Sates was in a higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he told Techcrunch. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States.”