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This is a biased if not myopic view of higher education. To Peter Thiel, the best route for a high school graduate is to go to Silicon Valley and do a start-up. While that might be the best option for a very few, it just doesn't work for a general public.

Beside, this article started with "higher education", but never even touched upon what that word meant. It's higher education, it's education. By and large, college provides the best environment for young people to meet and learn from professors and from their peers. The college experience is a very special experience for learning. College is not just an investment of how much money you put in and how much your salary will be after you get out.

Even if Bill Gates and Zuck Markerburg dropped out of Harvard, I am sure they learned a lot while being there, and perhaps beyond what they probably were aware of at the time. Bill Gates for example coauthored a paper with Cristo Papadimitriou (a giant in Computer Science) while at Harvard. I bet Bill had great opportunities to meet and learn from many great people while being there.




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