Let's see. Bill Gates dropped out. So did Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Jobs went to Reed College (where?) and didn't graduate.
Maybe Peter Thiel's perspective is a bit distorted?
> Absolutely everything happens in only a few cities...
Maybe Peter Thiel isn't the only one with a bit of a distorted perspective?
Thiel suggests that the "colleges that matter" offer more, e.g. research labs, that bring more to the table. That may justify going further in some cases. Certainly researchers at Harvard have done a lot of ground breaking things. Can Reed College say the same?
Thiel's perspective may very well be skewed, but I am not sure these examples show that. More interesting would be to look at what game changing things the graduates of Reed College have done, not those who ran away.
In contrast, he suggests that a Reed College has no such opportunity. Let's say Jobs did graduate. Then what? Maybe he'd become a professor there? What can one really get out of Reed College? More likely he'd just end up back in industry, at which point it was a waste of resources to invest in academia; a waste which Thiel would consider to be a dunce move.
No, they realized that they had a limited time-window opportunity on their hands that has a potential for a lot more value than the degree, as long as they executed on that opportunity well and had a bit of luck.
Neither Gates nor Zuck just dropped out with nothing going on for them, and only then started their respective companies. IIRC Zuck quit because he was busy running Facebook during its explosive growth phase, and he had to make a choice between allocating his time to running FB and school.
Most people who decide to drop out don't have an explosively-growing business on their hands that they have a limited time-window to execute on. And while this is a pure guess, but I don't think Zuck would drop out just because, without something like FB fighting for his time and attention.
Only a few colleges matter. A degree from the others is “actually a dunce cap” according to Peter Thiel.
Absolutely everything happens in only a few cities, which of course have developed completely ludicrous property prices. Nothing happens anywhere else, so if you want a good career you have to at least spend time in one of these.
Markets are winner take all with one or maybe a few companies taking each vertical.
I have asked older people about this, especially the urban elitism of only a few cities matter. Most of them have confirmed what I have observed (I am 45) namely that these trends massively accelerated roughly after the year 2000.
It could be due to the Internet, historically low interest rates redistributing wealth to those that can easily net investment or cheap corporate debt, or some other factor, but I do think it’s real. I also suspect it’s a hidden driver of our political hyper polarization.
The urban elitism seems to have been dented a little by telework and COVID, and we seem to be entering an unbundling phase with social media. Maybe the trend is reversing.