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Peter Thiel’s 4 Definitions of Higher Education
Do students understand what they’re getting into?
Peter Thiel is one of the most underrated thinkers in the Western world currently. His ideas have depth, his analyses are to the point, and his capacity to predict a startup’s success can only be matched with that of Paul Graham, Y Combinator founder.
It is therefore not surprising that Peter Thiel has developed a model to think about education, outlining what it is, what it says it is, and what it is viewed as.
To contextualize Thiel’s views of universities, we need to understand his own educative track.
Peter Thiel’s Life in a Nutshell
Born in Germany to German parents, Thiel moved around extensively with his parents before eventually settling down in California.
After high school, he studied philosophy than law at Stanford. He subsequently went on to work for Wall Street, wrote speeches for politicians, and founded his hedge-fund before going on to set up and develop PayPal which he sold for $1.5 billion to eBay.
He subsequently invested in Facebook (which made him a billionaire), created the data-analysis firm Palantir, and invested in a myriad of other startups.
