Meet The Startup That Convinced Hundreds To Drop Out of College.
By: Luke Jacobs
Tags: College, Startup, Work, Education, Entrepreneurship

When you go out into the world, there’s no structure. … A job doesn’t give you a syllabus.” -Dale Stephens, Founder of UnCollege,

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2013 that of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only five typically require a bachelor’s degree.

To fill this gap, the opt-out industry has swept in, promising students a new credential to secure in-demand jobs in less time with little damage to their wallet.

These educators have a diverse set of experiential learning techniques, usually promoting personalized instruction and a focus on teaching digital skills like online marketing, coding, and data analysis.

Though their exact programs differ, all of the companies lambast the traditional college education as incapable of producing productive adults.

A post on Praxis’s website tells readers to “Throw Away Your Resume,” and describes how little companies care about the standard achievements of college students (leadership positions, internships, studying abroad).

While this may seem counterintuitive to the average student, Praxis claims that so few of them realize “that hundreds of others applying [to jobs] have the same, or similar, resume.”

“They’ve all jumped through the hoops, played by the same rules, interned here and there. They’ve all been told their entire lives that they’re the best and brightest — their resumes speak for themselves, they think.”

For opt-outs, colleges heard students into an antiquated, uniform way of looking for work that doesn’t highlight their individual skills or personality.

Despite their careerist rhetoric, opt-out companies believe deeply in the importance of education, they just think that students learn best when they direct their own studies.

That’s why many of them don’t provide courses. Instead, they ask incoming participants what interests them. After they compile a list, they’re hooked up with experts in their fields.

Praxis offers one-on-one video chats with experts in psychology, philosophy, and literature. UnCollege pairs its participants to work with a charity of their choice and a personalized career coach. Peter Thiel’s foundation tell students “how you spend your two years in the Fellowship is up to you — we’re here to help, but we won’t get in the way.”

On his personal website, Derek asks skeptical students to consider a thought experiment. It’s designed to rope them into the idea that their current education, in terms of course material, is largely pointless.

He calls it The Dean’s Test.

Imagine you are an incoming freshman at a prestigious school. On your first day of orientation, the Dean comes to the microphone to make a special announcement. “Degrees will no longer be awarded,” he says with a smile. “School is about learning,” he goes on. “Tuition remains unchanged and students will be able to pay to take classes in their interests and desired fields like normal. Also, the entire world will follow this policy as well.” He concludes: Do you think most students would still remain students? Would you yourself remain a student? Would your parents still tell you to stay in school?

It’s an effective message, especially in the era of sky-high tuition.

For most of its existence, college was a place for young adults to nurture their intellectual curiosity. If a company recruiter walked onto a campus a hundred years ago, they’d be driven out of the halls for trying to corrupt higher education with the nasty business of commerce.

Nowadays, anyone who is willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of learning probably isn’t too worried about their degree getting them a job. For the majority of students, however, the cost of college needs to have a clear monetary return. That’s why Derek began to market Praxis’s fairly steep $12,000 enrollment fee as a form of “net-positive” tuition.

Praxis guarantees members a paid gig at a startup after the program ends, and claims that companies are not only willing to pay it’s 18–21-year-old newbies $15 an hour to learn but are actually eager to do so.

After their six-month apprenticeship ends, students make a net profit of $2,000, a swath of professional connections, and actionable experience in their chosen field.

It’s not hard to see why Derek sometimes struggles with convincing prospective members about the authenticity of his program — in 2018 the average young person left college with $30,000 in debt and took eight times as a long as a Praxis participant to do so.

Though Derek’s “Dean Test” seems to make enough sense, common knowledge suggests that you should go to college. Common knowledge also suggests that if you do go and drop out, it’s probably not because you’re the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, but a loser.

Of all the criticism that the opt-outs have had to hear, the “Zuckerberg Fallacy” reigns as the most irritating. The logic of it goes like this: College is necessary to succeed unless you’re a boy-genius who is already nurturing a billion dollar startup in your dorm room. If you’re like the average college student (poor, aimless, and confused) you should probably stay because you have nothing waiting for you if you leave.

Proponents of the Zuckerberg Fallacy point to the popular statistic that college graduates, on average, enjoy more than $700,000 in lifetime earnings compared to nongraduates. The vast majority of America’s 30 million college dropouts are, statistically speaking, more likely than graduates to be unemployed, poor, and in default on their debt.

This statistic poses a fundamental challenge to the opt-outs faith in individual effort. To rebut it, they’ve swarmed the internet. “Claiming the data proves college helps you make more money is like claiming basketball helps you grow taller,” Derek wrote on his personal blog.

In other words, smarter people attend college at higher rates than the less intellectually endowed. But the most effective rebuttal, opt-outs have found, is one about opportunity costs.

If you buy the idea that students could be building a career for four years instead of studying, then this often-cited statistic fails to include the potential earnings of someone with a four-year head start.

But arguments like these, whether they are true or not, sometimes attract even more anger and criticism at programs like Praxis. What value, if any, do they find in a college’s supposedly exclusive career resources, like campus recruiters or access to a global network of alumni?