“College is broken,” one Palantir post said. “Admissions are based on flawed criteria. Meritocracy and excellence are no longer the pursuits of educational institutions,” it said. The fellowship offered a path for high-school students to work full time at the company.
After deciding to apply, Zanini found out he got the fellowship at around the same time he learned of his admission to Brown University. Brown wouldn’t allow him to defer and he had also landed a full-ride scholarship through the Department of Defense.
“No one said to do the fellowship,” said Zanini, who turned 18 in September. “All of my friends, my teachers, my college counselor, it was a unanimous no.” His parents left the decision to him, and he decided to go with Palantir.
Zanini is one of more than 500 high-school graduates who applied for Palantir’s “Meritocracy Fellowship”—an experiment launched under Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s thesis that existing American universities are no longer reliable or necessary for training good workers.
Some fellows applied because college wasn’t interesting to them. Others applied after getting rejected from target schools.
Palantir is a data-analytics company that has become known lately for its government contracts, including with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Its work with immigration enforcement authorities and in other arenas has drawn criticism, but Karp and other executives have leaned into a pro-America ethos. The company also has many commercial clients.