"What we want to suggest is that there are some very smart and very talented people who don't need college”, (Markowitz, 2012) said Peter Thiel in an interview with National Review and with this belief in mind, Peter Thiel founded ‘The Thiel Fellowship’ through ‘The Thiel Foundation’ in 2011. The vision behind this initiative was to find talented minds and create a learning experience for them and to make them capable of doing things which can change the world.
The Thiel Fellowship empowers young people (under the age of 23) by providing them a sum of $100,000 over a time period of 2 years. The fellowship is for people who want to create new things and do not want to continue or want to skip their formal education. The Thiel Fellowship website says, “The Thiel Fellowship gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom” (thielfellowship.org, n.d.). One of the important conditions for one to be accepted into The Thiel fellowship is that an individual has to drop out of his or her formal education. Apart from the money, The Thiel Fellowship also offers mentoring and networks to its fellows, which are important elements for one to be successful.
One of the most successful Thiel fellows is India’s Ritesh Agarwal, who was accepted as a Thiel fellow while he was in the process of founding OYO hotel chain. Ritesh Agarwal is also the first Asian to be chosen as a Thiel fellow. Other examples of successful Thiel fellows are Conrad Kramer and Ari Weinstein who created a productivity app named ‘workflow’, which was applauded by apple. Workflow became the most purchased iPhone app for four days after it was launched in 2014; in 2015 Weinstein and Kramer were awarded for the most innovative app of the year (Robinson, 2017).
These examples and testimony of other Thiel fellows declares The Thiel fellowship a success. The objective of The Thiel fellowship is not only to create companies which can raise millions of dollars in the future but also to help its fellows learn what they would have missed in a traditional college or school education. The Fellowship is, first and foremost, an alternative to education, allowing you to expedite your growth by giving you the freedom to pursue your greatest ventures and ideas during your most intellectually productive years (Koren, 2016).
After successfully predicting the dot com and housing market bubble, Peter Thiel believes that education is the next bubble. "There's been an incredible escalation in price without corresponding improvements in the product, and yet people still believe that college is just something that you have to do. Whenever something is overvalued and intensely believed, that's a sign of a bubble” (CLYNES, 2017). Both Peter Thiel’s prediction, and the success of The Thiel fellowship brings up a point that there is a need for huge changes in our education system and how we manage talent.
With Thiel fellowship, the PayPal founder and early investor in Facebook has proven that success can be achieved outside the classroom by investing in promising minds.
References
(n.d.). Retrieved from thielfellowship.org: https://thielfellowship.org/
CLYNES, T. (2017, February 22). Retrieved from Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/2017/03/03/peter-thiel-fellowship-college-higher-education-559261.html
Koren, A. (2016, February 2).
Retrieved from www.medium.com: https://medium.com/@AlexEKoren/the-thiel-fellowship-application-a-how-to-1d64f032c3f5
Markowitz, E. (2012, October 16).
Retrieved from www.inc.com: https://www.inc.com/eric-markowitz/examing-the-thiel-fellowship-is-it-worthwhile.html
Robinson, M. (2017, March 6).
Retrieved from www.inc.com: https://www.inc.com/business-insider/peter-thiel-successful-fellows-college-dropouts-entrepreneurs.html