For Some Thiel Fellows, Drop-Out Grant More Like Sabbatical

Many of the teenage entrepreneurs given $100,000 by maverick philanthropist Peter Thiel to drop out of college and pursue business ideas plan to return to higher education after their fellowships are finished, according to technology-news site TechCrunch.

The Thiel Fellowship program, launched in 2011 by the billionaire Silicon Valley investor, provides two-year grants to 20 people under 20 each year. It’s premise that higher education could hinder rather than help budding entrepreneurs has provoked debate in academic and philanthropic circles.

The Thiel Foundation says only six of the 40 young people to have completed the program have returned to college. But eight of the 2014 fellows interviewed by TechCrunch said they would consider going back to school when they finished the program, as did some from the last year’s group.

“A lot of the kids seemed to be using the program as more of a prestigious two-year internship, kind of like a Rhodes Scholarship for tech, with scant regard for Thiel’s plan to disrupt higher education,” reporter Sarah Buhr writes.