On Wednesday, the Thiel Foundation, funded by Mr. Thiel, announced the first group of Thiel Fellows, 24 people under 20 who have agreed to drop out of school in exchange for a $100,000 grant and mentorship to start a tech company.

More than 400 people applied. The winners include Laura Deming, 17, who is developing anti-aging therapies; Faheem Zaman, 18, who is building mobile payment systems for developing countries; and John Burnham, 18, who is working on extracting minerals from asteroids and comets.

The fellowship addresses two of the country’s most pressing problems, Mr. Thiel says: a bubble in higher education and a dearth of Americans developing breakthrough technologies.

In the PH, you literally could not get into most white collar work without at least a 4-year bachelor's degree. The effect is that the PH's college education value is low because the supply (college graduates) is way more than the demand (jobs and other opportunities for these graduates).

Thiel's idea is a good way of changing the age-old assumption that to get ahead in career and life, you need a degree.

We need these sorts of ideas here in the PH in order to put value back to college education and not take it for granted and to give opportunities for those who can't or won't choose the college path.