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Peter Thiel: The University System Today Is Like the Catholic Church Circa 1500

By Peter Thiel · Mindset & Career · 1 min read

The university system is seen as the only path to knowledge. Get a diploma, you're saved. Don't get one — you go to hell. It's like the Catholic Church circa 1500. And like the 16th century reformers, the disturbing message is: you have to figure out how to save yourself.

Key Points

The Thiel Fellowship hit a raw nerve — there's enormous anxiety about whether education is worth the cost
The university system is like the Catholic Church circa 1500 — seen as the only path to salvation
The future won't be one-size-fits-all — it'll be fragmented, and you have to figure out how to save yourself

The university system today is perhaps like the Catholic Church circa 1500. Get a diploma, you're saved. Don't — you'll go to hell.

The Raw Nerve

Thiel: When I announced the Thiel Fellowship in September 2010, it was envisioned as a really narrow program. Just 20 people. I didn't expect it to generate this enormous amount of controversy. But it somehow hit this incredibly raw nerve.

There's a lot of anxiety around education. Education is seen as the absolute be-all and end-all for everything. But because it's costing people so much money, students are graduating with so much debt — there's an awful lot of anxiety about whether people are getting what they're paying for.

20 people. I didn't expect the controversy. It hit an incredibly raw nerve.

The Catholic Church Circa 1500

Thiel: The university system today is perhaps like the Catholic Church circa 1500. It's seen as the only path to knowledge. It's the way you get saved — if you get a diploma, you're saved. If you don't get a college diploma, you will go to hell. Or our modern equivalent of that.

But I'm not proposing to create some alternate unitary church. What I think will happen is it'll be much more fragmented.

Get a diploma, you're saved. Don't — you go to hell. Like the Catholic Church circa 1500.

You Have to Save Yourself

Thiel: The biggest misconception is that I want to blow up the universities and have everyone become an entrepreneur. Quite the opposite. The future will not have a one-size-fits-all approach. If there's anything unnatural about our current system, it is that it's one-size-fits-all. You go to Yale or you go to jail.

Like the 16th century reformers, the somewhat disturbing message is — you have to figure out how to save yourself. Which is the absolute last thing people want to hear.

Go to Yale or go to jail. The disturbing message: you have to figure out how to save yourself.