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- 🐴 How a $100,000 bet against college created 11 billion-dollar companies
🐴 How a $100,000 bet against college created 11 billion-dollar companies
Harvard requires 32 credits to graduate, but how many do you actually need for success? PLUS: OpenEd is coming to Minnesota! Tell a friend.
Charlie Deist
April 14, 2025
Hey there!
I’ve got some exciting news to share - OpenEd is expanding to Minnesota for the 2025-2026 school year!
Do you know anyone in Minnesota who might be interested? If so, please forward this email or share this link: opened.co/minnesota
– Isaac Morehouse, CEO of OpenEd
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IN THIS EDITION:
🍎 Why traditional schools prepare children for a world that no longer exists
🍎 Roblox's open-source 3D model that's changing how we create digital environments
🍎 How the Thiel Fellowship proved college might be unnecessary for extraordinary success
💡 THOUGHT
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Standardized education prepares children for a world that no longer exists.
Open education prepares them for a world that doesn't exist yet.
📊 TREND
CHALLENGING THE COLLEGE REQUIREMENT
"Harvard requires you to take 32 credits to graduate, some 16 in a major, electives... we decided none of that is required to find success in life, especially when it comes to working in technology."
In 2010, Peter Thiel launched a radical experiment: pay talented young people $100,000 to skip or leave college and build something important.
Michael Gibson, a co-founder of the fellowship, describes being inspired by Elon Musk's approach to engineering: challenge requirements, remove what can't be justified, then optimize what remains. Applied to education, they questioned whether traditional degree requirements actually lead to innovation and success.
Critics called it "the most misdirected philanthropy of the decade," but the results suggest otherwise.
The program has launched 11 companies worth over $1 billion, including Figma (acquired by Adobe for $20 billion), Ethereum, and Luminar. All this while student debt has ballooned to $1.7 trillion and college costs have increased 1000% in real terms over 40 years.
🔨 TOOL
ROBLOX UNLEASHES CREATIVITY
Roblox just released Cube 3D, an open-source tool that lets anyone create 3D objects with simple text prompts like "/generate a motorcycle."
Last year, one of the YEA! competition winners built a thriving Roblox store that earned him real money.
With the democratization of these creative tools, knowledge and skills that were once locked behind institutional walls are now available to anyone willing to explore them.
That’s all for today! See you tomorrow.
– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)
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