Peter Thiel on college: "far worse than I even thought ... a lot of the students got ripped off."

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Episode Description

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Brief Summary

The episode critiques rising student debt and calls for university accountability in financial reform.

Key points

  • The Rising Student Debt Crisis. Student debt has skyrocketed from $300 billion in 2000 to nearly $2 trillion today.
  • Universities and Accountability. The burden of student debt shouldn't fall solely on taxpayers; universities must share responsibility.

Transcript

What have you learned getting people to quit school, giving them $100,000, and then how many parents call you and get really upset that their kids are quitting school? I think the universities are far worse than I even thought when I started this thing. You know, the student debt was 300 billion in 2000, it's uh it's basically uh close to two trillion at this point. And then if you look at it by cohort, if you graduated from college in 1997, 12 years later, people still had student debt, but most of the people had sort of paid it down. By 2009, the median person had more student debt 12 years later than they graduated with. I do think a lot of the students got ripped off. So, I think

there should be some kind of broad um student debt forgiveness at this point who should pick up the 10. It's not just the taxpayers. It's the universities and it's the the the bond holders. The bond holders and and and the universities. If you just make it the taxpayers, then the universities can just charge more and more every no incentive to reform what whatsoever.

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