The end of a calendar year brings many things, but perhaps one of my favorites involve listening to others take stock of the previous 360+ days. Sometimes I think it's sad people don't do this more often, since so many interesting "seasons" in life don't follow the usual calendar system (the school-year previously being the most potent example for me). At any rate, the last few days of December are a convenient time, if nothing else, to look back upon the days that were, and consider their significance in the coming year.
Newspapers often approach this project by rehashing important (or provocative) events, remembering those famous figures who passed away, reviewing the big ideas of the year, and finally, having a laugh at predictions made the previous year which failed to materialize. Whatever your opinion on the matter, it's often done.
One idea I "rediscovered" in the plethora of "year-in-review" publications for 2011 was described in an article by Sarah Lacy, senior editor of TechCrunch.com, entitled "Peter Thiel: We're in a Bubble and it's not the Internet. It's Higher Education."
For those who don't know of Peter Thiel, he is among other things a co-founder of PayPal, and according to Ms. Lacy, "has a special talent for making people furious." This is likely because he has on multiple occasions in the past backed minority opinions, and often proved annoyingly accurate in his assessment (for instance, navigating PayPal through the Nasdaq collapse in 2000, and more recently his own finances through the housing-bubble in 2008).
But it's one thing to get a prediction about the economy right, and quite another to endorse a program which questions a cherished national belief. Yet this is precisely what Mr. Thiel decided to do this past year, and his target is what he perceives to be a bubble of higher education.
Mr. Thiel suggests that "'a true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed.'" Ms. Lacy goes on to compare this education bubble idea with the housing bubble. "Like the housing bubble," she says, "the education bubble is all about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe."
The promise (described in part in an earlier post) is not without merit, but as Ms. Lacy suggests, the logic at work in a bubble is often "rooted in truth," but taken "to unhealthy levels." Mr. Thiel contends (in Ms. Lacy's words) that this unhealthy level is reached in higher education by "pin[ning] people's best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary." Says Mr. Thiel, "'If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?'"
It's a fair question, but would Harvard really be Harvard if everyone could attend? "'It's something about the scarcity and status.'" suggests Mr. Thiel. "'In education your value depends on other people failing...It's a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they'd be fine. Maybe that's not true.'"
That last sentence suggests that part of Mr. Thiel's purpose is to develop what Ms. Lacy calls a "counter-narrative" in response to a belief about higher education "rooted in the most elite echelons of the upper class." Accordingly, higher education's value should not only be questioned; in addition, viable alternatives need to be developed that hinge not on the promise of getting into an exclusive club, but on the rewards garnered through creativity and challenging previously-held notions of possibility.
In that spirit, this past year Mr. Thiel launched the "20 under 20" program. "The idea was simple," says Ms. Lacy. "Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead."
The program has not passed without controversy, and it remains to be seen if the "alternative path" the program hopes to offer will prove truly viable. But one thing seems clear: 2011 has proved a year full questions, and the years to come will bear witness to how efficacious the answers now being proposed will be. It's an interesting time to be sure.
Happy Thursday, friends :)
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