Silicon Valley Debate: Billionaire vs Stanford Academic Who Wins?

SILICON VALLEY, Calif. - March 31, 2016 - PRLog -- You may have heard, or read about Peter Thiel's unique notion; advocating for young students to dropout if need be, in order to pursue their goals. More important, he was willing to fund the idea by giving $100,000 grant to teenagers to pursue their entrepreneurial passion. At least, he's willing to back his convictions which accounts for a lot. Of course, Vivek Wadhwa of Stanford University is the staunch advocate for college education, and we wouldn't expect less. The video below show both men jostling to win; in a jiu-jitsu of words showdown. From an investor perspective, I understand Peter's position. There's evidence to support his notion, going as far back as the 70s with Steve Jobs.  If Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak had someone like Peter back then, they wouldn't have complained.  Additionally operations would have been much smoother at the beginning.  However, I doubt many will support Peter's contrarian position, because of the pride, empowerment and upliftment which comes with higher education. Also, college degree holders earn over $1 million more in their professional lifetime, than those without degrees. Hence, it's hard to rally around dropping out of college.

Since there are two sides to every story and debate, I would like to clarify that Peter was specifically focusing on techies. On an aggregate basis, higher education is great for all, and the nation as a whole. As we know, children usually mirror or follow in their parents footsteps; hence it is difficult to convince your children to attend university if you didn't. If you happen to be wealthy, great for you, but usually bad for your children, because most of the time they will lack the fire which should propel them. Case in point; if you watch Billions, the new show on Showtime, you will understand. Season 1, Episode 7: you will see Bobby Axelrod's wife trying to teach her sons life skills on how to be tougher. She says to her sister, they are not street smart, her sister responds, they've never been on the streets. Back to the subject, it's hard for children who grow up under ginormous shadows; e.g., imagine growing up with Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Richard Branson as your father, it's almost impossible to top that on your own.  As they say, first generation builds it, second spends it, and third loses it.

Although dropping out of college is a deleterious proposition, especially for people with less fortunate backgrounds. Paradoxically, I agree to some degree with Peter's comment, because it's something which I thought about and studied for a very long time; not the dropping out of school part, but the question, do college dropouts become more successful?  The reason for agreeing with Peter, timing to business, is what location is to real-estate. If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, David Karp or any other tech guy decided to complete college, they may have lost the opportunity to someone else, or the innovation will not be the same. In order to support Peter's contrarian position, please view the names below, these are the world's wealthiest people who dropped out of school, or couldn't afford it, for whatever reason, but they followed their dreams, and became more successful than a thousand PhDs and MBAs combined. Watch Vivek Wadhwa and Peter Thiel duke it out, full length here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VTQ-dBYSlQ



Famous and Successful Dropouts: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Stanley Ho, Dean Kamen, David Karp, Ralph Lauren, Kirk Kerkorian, Jack Taylor, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and the list goes on (http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carney-ten-people-who...).
Do college dropouts become more successful? My Honest response, I don't know.
There would have to be a study with different factors to prove those with degrees are more successful, or the other way around. Success would have to be defined clearly etc.   A better way to approach the whole situation is to see it holistically; examine the same people who became successful and ask, with a college degree, will the same people have become the success they are today, yes or no. If you answered yes, keep reading, if you answered no, then still keep reading.

• If it's safe to assume that with or without college degrees, these individuals would have turned out to be successful, then it's safe to also assume that, there's no direct correlation which links college degree to extreme success.
• The proportion of people with college degrees far outweighs those without, so why are most people from both camps, with and without degrees, not as successful as the few outliers. Again, that gives us a clear indication that there's no direct correlation which links college degree to business acumen and monetary success. Or lack of college degree to extreme success.  A book would have to written on it, and that's not my job. The most qualified person who comes to mind is Malcom Gladwell.
• Does anyone think a college degree, an MBA or perhaps a PhD would have made the successful outliers even more successful e.g., having one extra billion or million, of course not.

Given the points above, it's easy to reason through logically, that graduating or dropping out of college does not have much bearing on the one 1%, or successful outliers. However, for the rest of the 99%, it's much safer to graduate because knowledge is power, and we are in a knowledge economy. Cautionary tale, si+nce most people do not know tomorrow's outcome or have crystal balls to foretell, the best advice is to stay in school. Except you are the heir of a successful outlier, and if you are, people will respect you more because you are not living off, hand me down wealth. www.maapit.com