Peter Thiel (Paypal and other ventures) has been making some waves for his position that higher education in the US is the next bubble. In short, he's right. Given what we now have available in terms of tools, it should be possible to get an Ivy league education for $20 a month.

Instead we are getting a stagnant product that is so out of date that it doesn't deliver much social and economic value. Even worse: it's undergoing hyper-inflationary price increases.

So, what should you do? Thiel says you should refuse to participate and drop out. Unfortunately, that's not a solution. Just because something is vastly overpriced (like houses or stocks), it doesn't mean that it is worthless. A degree is still valuable because it's valued in the workplace (even though it's not the golden ticket to employment anymore).

The solution to this problem is to help create employment opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don't use a degree as a gating mechanism. A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global econonomic and social sprawl.

Create the pull (the opportunity) and the rest will follow.