Is he wrong? Colleges are an exclusionary filter. I’m not even sure they are even good filters. These days everyone has a degree so it does not mean much to have one. And as for the elite colleges, there are a lot of equivalently capable people who are rejected by them after going through years of performative gestures to build up the right resume. There are also deserving people that are discriminated against in the elite college holistic admission process. These universities are also very expensive for students and for taxpayers.
Most students do not need the university to have expensive professors or expensive administration or research capabilities. They need a place that will teach them in a classroom. And they also need a place that will give them a credential to prove what they learned. It doesn’t matter that random professor is doing random research - it’s some underpaid grad student that is teaching you after all. And these things don’t need to be under one roof.
We badly need alternatives - for colleges and also public schooling in America. I don’t know if this is the solution or one among them, but I would like to see more experimental approaches like it.
Linkedin shows that the number one place where Palantir employees studied is Stanford. They love to dig on these universities, but yes, he's wrong, by his own companies hiring processes. And I can't find the number of applicants, but at all these universities the number of accepted students is rising, and the acceptance rate is falling dramatically, which suggests many more people are applying. So he will tell you Elite universities suck while absolutely advising people he knows to go to an elite university.
Pedigree matters tremendously. I don't want it to! I went to a state school, I want to believe going to Harvard doesn't matter. But it's bananas to think it actually doesn't. Alex Karp doesn't believe elite education is useless, he wants YOU to believe it's useless.
Clicked on 20 random Palantir profiles on LinkedIn. All went to college, disproportionate number of ivies/elite
Most students do not need the university to have expensive professors or expensive administration or research capabilities. They need a place that will teach them in a classroom. And they also need a place that will give them a credential to prove what they learned. It doesn’t matter that random professor is doing random research - it’s some underpaid grad student that is teaching you after all. And these things don’t need to be under one roof.
We badly need alternatives - for colleges and also public schooling in America. I don’t know if this is the solution or one among them, but I would like to see more experimental approaches like it.