Why College May Be Totally Free Within 10 Years

Dan Kadlec:

As few as 10 years from now, quality higher education will be largely free--unless, of course, nothing much has changed. It all depends on whom you believe. But one thing is clear: The debate about financing education grows louder by the day.

Experts with a wide range of views on the subject, including the always-interesting Harvard professor and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, weighed in last weekend at the Nantucket Project, a big-think conference in the spirit of TED and Aspen Ideas Festival. The most provocative, though, were hedge fund billionaire Peter Thiel and the author and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa.

Thiel has gotten a lot of attention for his view that higher education is broken, and that many kids would be better off saving their money and going straight from high school into a trade or developing a business. His "20 under 20" fellowship grants high school graduates with a sound business idea $100,000 if they agree to skip college and go right to work on their idea.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 16, 2012 1:24 AM
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