Sometimes you come across a book with such an intriguing title that you just have to dive into it. That was the case when I saw a reference to Paper Belt on Fire by Michael Gibson. The book’s subtitle sealed the deal: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University. Too iconoclastic to pass up!
The author, I learned, is a college graduate (New York University) who had embarked on a Ph.D. in philosophy at Oxford when he decided that the academic life wasn’t really what he wanted. Why? Because, he came to understand, it wouldn’t allow him free rein for deep and original thinking.
So he bailed out on the doctorate and, after doing nothing at all for a while, found himself working for Silicon Valley legend Peter Thiel. He was hired as an investment analyst but was soon on the Thiel Fellowshipteam, evaluating young people for the $100,000 grants that Thiel was making available to innovation-minded Americans who would get the money in lieu of enrolling in college.
College degrees have become a new form of the indulgences the Church used to sell the faithful.
That assignment was ideal for Gibson, who had already concluded that college degrees had become a new form of the indulgences the Church used to sell to the faithful who wanted salvation. Just like the Church, today’s universities are flush with money, looking obsessively to amass even more. They sell prestige degrees at a high price, but most of the graduates have forgotten everything they have learned by the time they get into the workforce, usually doing jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied.
It’s a huge waste of time and talent.