It may seem daunting for young professionals to ditch their Ivy League schools after being promised six-figure salaries after graduation. But Thiel actually created the program out of a deep cynicism toward the traditional education system for 20-somethings, which he has often called a \u201ccorrupt institution.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHigher education is the worst institution we have,\u201d Thiel said in the release<\/a> of this year\u2019s batch of entrepreneurs. \u201cFor these exceptional fellows, we are providing an alternative.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n These ex-fellows prove that dropping out can result in serious success.<\/p>\n Dylan Field, cofounder and CEO of $40 billion company Figma\u00a0<\/p>\n Bloomberg \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n Sitting in a Brown University dorm room just a decade ago, then-19-year-old Dylan Field conceived Figma, a company offering a collaborative design tool that now rivals Adobe<\/a>. However, things didn\u2019t get off the ground until he dropped out of the prestigious college after less than two years in order to receive a Thiel fellowship. His mother told CNBC<\/a> in 2012 that she \u201cwasn\u2019t thrilled about it,\u201d concerned about the long-term impact of not having a college degree on his future career prospects. But after Figma\u2019s breakout success, she shouldn\u2019t be so worried anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last month, Figma\u2019s triumphant IPO<\/a> made Field a billionaire; He went from being a college-dropout with just $100,000 in his pocket from the fellowship to amassing a net worth now standing at about $5 billion.<\/p>\n Aside from an eye-popping net worth, Field said that the fellowship gave him something far more valuable than what a college degree would provide\u2014uninterrupted time to focus entirely on building his idea. With time and mentorship, they send you off: \u201cGo build something amazing,\u201d Field said in that same 2012 interview. And he did.<\/p>\n \u201cHere was this 19-year-old, who had a lot of clarity about what he wanted to do\u2014democratize the world of design, and provide tools to everyone,\u201d Danny Rimer, an early Figma investor, told Fortune<\/a> last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lucy Guo, cofounder of $29 billion tech company Scale AI<\/p>\n Gonzalo Marroquin \/ Stringer \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n Before Lucy Guo became the youngest female self-made billionaire, she was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon unhappy with what she was learning at school. Guo told Fortune<\/a> that, while at the Pennsylvania college, she felt days-long coding competitions taught her more than the professors did.\u00a0<\/p>\n So she dropped out in 2014 and soon after came up with the idea for Scale AI\u2014a data labelling startup\u2014 with her cofounder, Alexandr Wang, whom she met while working at Quora. Meta<\/a> recently acquired the company in a $14 billion deal that valued the company at over $29 billion. Guo left the company in 2016, and her 5% stake made her the youngest self-made female billionaire<\/a>, dethroning record-holder Taylor Swift.\u00a0<\/p>\n Looking back on her success, she called the Thiel Fellowship the best thing<\/a> that has ever happened to her. \u201cYou\u2019re the average of the five people you hang around the most, and the Thiel Fellowship surrounds you with ambitious, smart people that are all a little crazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha, cofounders of $2 billion AI company Mercor\u00a0<\/p>\n Craig T Fruchtman \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n One of the biggest AI successes bolstered by the Thiel fellowship is Mercor<\/a>, an AI hiring platform that is attempting to transform the candidate-matching process. The business ballooned to a $2 billion valuation in February of this year, due to big demand for AI-powered recruitment. All three members of the cofounding team\u2014Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha\u2014were recipients of the billionaire\u2019s fellowship funding.<\/p>\n As AI advances at dizzying speed, the founders felt it was unwise to stick it out through four years of college and delay building their startup. Midha, cofounder and COO of Mercor, told The New York Times<\/a> that he felt both an \u201cextreme urgency\u201d and \u201cexistential dread\u201d about letting the AI boom pass by him.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adarsh Hiremath, cofounder and CTO of the AI business, also said he was receiving diminished returns<\/a> from the Harvard University experience after his first year at the Ivy League. Instead, he chose to take the fellowship opportunity\u00a0 to \u201cgive it [his] all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Massive student loans and lack of job opportunities are diminishing college returns\u00a0<\/p>\n Silicon Valley has always idolized the high-achieving college dropout, from Mark Zuckerberg to Larry Ellison. The fellowship is responsible for the billions in business value its alums have created. Thiel\u2019s blessing gives a startup founder credibility that college just can\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beyond<\/a> the entrepreneurial sphere, Gen Z has been grappling with the diminishing returns of a degree, and are looking for alternative ways to establish a career. The price of U.S. college tuition has increased to an average of $38,270 a year<\/a>, making the cost unmanageable for the nearly half of Americans<\/a> living paycheck-to-paycheck. Plus, for some, the career edge may be gone<\/a>; for men with a degree, the unemployment rate is the same as it is for men who did not attend college.<\/p>\n About 38% of graduates feel like their student loans have limited their career growth more than their diploma has accelerated it, according to a recent survey<\/a> conducted by Indeed. Thiel has echoed that sentiment, saying at the inception of his program that college has become a distraction<\/a> \u201cbecause young people coming out of college are saddled with student loans, which start tracking them into careers that pay well but are ultimately not going to help our country.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1233645475-e1755279055341.jpg\"\/)
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