In recent years, the idea that obtaining a university degree was synonymous with professional success has been extended. However, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Jack Doresey or Amancio Ortega did not complete their university studies and that has not prevented them from becoming some of the world’s greatest fortunes.
Peter Thiel, co -founder of Paypal and Palantir has promoted a controversial “antibeca” for students in his company’s practices. Instead of encouraging everything to approve and be the best of promotion as they do the usual scholarships, their goal is for students to stop studying and devote themselves full to work in their company.
$ 5,400 for not studying. Peter Thiel’s data analysis company has presented an initiative for its fellows that defies conventional standards. Instead of encouraging the academic training of their beneficiaries, Palantir meritocracy scholarship, it offers them a salary $ 5,400 per month for a period of four -month practices for those students who have finished high school and have not enrolled in the university.
This initiative starts from the position maintained by the company’s directive, with Peter Thiel to the front, on the value provided by university education. “Everything you learned in school and at the University about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” said Alex Karp, co -founder and executive director of Palantir in an interview for CNBC.
Protest and capture talent in a movement. Beyond being a strategy to capture technological talent before it is put in the radar of the recruiters of the universities, the Peter Thiel scholarship is only one more step in the crusade that the founding millionaire maintains against the US educational system.
The Palantir meritocracy scholarship is nothing more than the extension of the Thiel scholarship that, as stated Techcrunchthe millionaire has been granting young talents that they want to undertake, under the condition of abandoning their university training. In return, they get $ 100,000 financing to start your company.
“The opaque standards of admission in many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence. As a result, qualified students are denied an education based on subjective and superficial criteria. Without meritocracy, campus have become culture broth for extremism and chaos,” says the call. In addition, he points out that at the end of the scholarship, candidates will have access to full -time hiring interviews to work in Palantir. “Forget about debts. Forget about indoctrination. Get the title of Palantir,” reads the scholarship specifications.
Risks to the future professional. Although abandoning the university may seem attractive thanks to the competitive salary and the work experience offered by Palantir, this decision is not exempt from risks, as recalled by the entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa in Forbes.
According to data from the US Labor Statistics Office of 2024, who have a university degree they earn up to 86% more a year than those who only have secondary studies. In addition to the financial impact, leaving the university implies losing valuable opportunities to establish professional and social networks. Connections with colleagues and teachers are usually fundamental to access future jobs or references. To name an example, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were university colleagues. Although Gates left Harvard months later, his stay served to generate those contacts.
University and work reality. Peter Thiel is not the only one who doubts the usefulness of the educational programs of the universities. According to the knowledge and development foundation report of 2024, 35.8% of university graduates occupy low qualification work, due to the disconnection between the competences acquired in the university and the demands of the labor market.
On the other hand, areas with high professional demand from companies, such as software and AI engineers engineers, register a high number of vacancies because universities are not offering adequate training to cover those vacancies, and it is the companies themselves who assume the internal training of their employees.
Less titles, more skills. The study ‘Dismissed by Degrees’ Prepared by Accenture, Grads of Life and Harvard Business School, he points out that many companies require university degrees for positions where the necessary skills could be acquired through work experience or technical training. This “practical” approach to skills is closer to the model adopted by the FP, than to the traditional university. Hence his success.
To deal with this hiring bias, companies such as IBM or Amazon have adopted skill -based hiring approaches, which value specific skills more than traditional university degrees. An approach that Mark Zuckerberg is very supportive.
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Imagen | Flickr (Gage Skidmore, Cory Doctorow)
