How many successful companies have actually been started by a Thiel Fellow? The only one I can find is Oyo, but Ritesh had already dropped out of college to work on its predecessor (Oravel) long before he applied to the Thiel Fellowship (which he apparently lied his way into, according to the comment above by Radim, and this article: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/7CN7u5d4i3bfYgBAZLdLpM/Wil...).

It seems to me (admittedly an outsider) that Thiel learned the wrong lesson from Zuck's success with dropping out to found Facebook. It wasn't because Zuck dropped out of college that Facebook was successful - it was because Facebook was already successful (already seeing exponential growth) that Zuck dropped out. Thiel then took this incorrect lesson to encourage lots of other students from elite universities to also drop out, which has had predictably disappointing results.

Similarly, Ritesh wasn't successful because he dropped out and became a Thiel Fellow - he was accepted to the Thiel Fellowship because he had already dropped out and had seen some success (or lied that he had, as it seems).

> Most if not successful get another job in the technology industry

Getting a job is great, but that just means that Thiel's stamp of approval has been placed on the individual, instead of the college's. The upside being years/thousands of dollars in saved tuition, the downside being that Thiel is not commonly known outside of Silicon Valley circles. I'd rather take the degree any day.

While I wouldn't call mine a success (yet), I'm a 2013 Thiel Fellow and founder of REX Computing, a recently venture funded fabless semiconductor startup. While venture funding is not a measure of success, I would say we are progressing technically very well. There have been a couple of exits (Streem was acquired by Box) and others that are still moving along, but no unicorns.

I think you also misunderstand Thiel's motives for the fellowship... it is not saying that because Zuck was sucessful because he dropped out of college, Zuck was already lucky that he wasn't in debt. The student debt crisis has been getting worse and worse over the past decade, and Thiel's real core idea is that student debt is a huge barrier for young people to take risks (such as starting or joining a startup) during or after college.

For myself, I actually dropped out of high school to accept the fellowship. At that point I already had 3 years work experience at MIT, and was going to drop out of school anyways to accept a position at a large tech company in the Valley making three times the Fellowship's yearly grant. What the Fellowship offered me was the chance to do something very risky and being able to get into the game quickly with an advantage. I think it was the right choice for me.

> The student debt crisis has been getting worse and worse over the past decade, and Thiel's real core idea is that student debt is a huge barrier for young people to take risks (such as starting or joining a startup) during or after college.

I also recognize the debt issue, although I suspect that most of the Thiel Fellows would have little trouble getting full scholarships, as I did, or come from stable, upper middle class households with high-achieving parents who would be able and willing to cover the cost of tuition, as I also did. My point is that college dropouts or recent graduates (even from elite colleges) are not necessarily the best people to start successful high-growth ventures, regardless of whether they're in debt or not. Just because Zuck did it with Facebook (although from what you said, this didn't figure into Thiel's decision to start the Fellowship) doesn't mean that it makes sense to encourage high-achieving college students to drop out and start a business - and the results have borne that out (though perhaps your internal data says otherwise).

In essence:

1. By the time someone is an ideal high-growth startup founder, college debt should no longer be a big concern, either because they never had it in the first place or because they paid it off with the high-paying job they got after college.

2. Most of those who are suffering from high amounts of student debt are probably never going to be ready to found a high-growth startup that someone like Thiel would be interested in anyway.

The real solution to the student debt crisis is to optimize high school education such that it is sufficient for most jobs (or perhaps high school education, followed by part-time associate degree + co-op), and alter societal/employers' expectations to accept that a BS is overkill. Unfortunately, that is a very thorny sociopolitical issue that isn't easily solvable by throwing money at moonshot companies founded by smart young people, and it's this latter activity that Thiel has the most experience in.

Before a BS became table stakes for decent employment, you could rely on free, government-provided education to get you to a good job. Getting high-achieving students to drop out of elite colleges to start high-growth ventures is a fundamentally orthogonal matter to returning society to that norm.