Multiple people have sent me links to an interview with Peter Thiel on National Review Online. Thiel made a fortune with PayPal and was the venture capitalist who originally funded Facebook. He's part of that global elite that were highlighted in the cover article of this month's Atlantic Monthly, who jet around the world going to conferences and pontificate about politics and ideas.

When I first read about the interest of the new global elite in policy, I was amused. It's great to see influential people taking an interest in education and the environment and all that. They'll help get more people talking about this stuff. Great. They'll kick in money for schools and new energy programs. Great. They'll hire people who really know about this stuff to advice them. My resume is in the mail.

But after reading Thiel's interview in the National Review, I'm just disgusted. How incredibly arrogant to you have to be to make these great pronouncements about how to make the world a better place, when you know absolutely nothing about the topic?

I know. Blogger. Pot. Kettle. Black. But, still, hear me out.

 So, Thiel wants smart kids to drop out of college and become entrepreneurs. He's even started giving out grants to kids who drop out of college. He thinks that college is expensive (true) and that kids aren't learning anything there (some yes, some no). It would be much better for them if they started their own businesses and saved the money that would have been blown in college. The more money they have in their pocket, the more likely they are to take risks.

Let me take apart his argument.

First, college is expensive. No question about it. Especially private colleges that don't provide scholarships. Money is being wasted on ice-skating rinks and football stadiums, which have no relationship with increasing the brain power of the students. Public colleges, on the other hand, are a much better deal and many provide an equivalent education to the top private colleges. Parents really need to do a better job of sorting through the crap and spending their education dollars wisely.

There are a million studies that show that people with BAs have a much higher income than those with high school degrees. Sure, there is some self-selection going on. Motivated people get college degrees, and they would have been motivated even without that college degrees and may have ended up making that much money anyway. But that degree means something. There are so many barriers to employment to people without a college degree that it's really impossible to progress through traditional businesses without that diploma.

Second, Thiel says that kids aren't learning much in college. I pointed to a study last week that showed that kids aren't doing much writing. Other studies find that kids are studying less and reading less than in the past. So, what's the truth?

It's really hard to measure how much a kid learns in college. There are way too many courses and teachers offered at one college to devise a test that measures all that knowledge. One standardized test that has everything from Socrates to micro-economics? Really?  Even the same course can be taught a dozen different ways by equally qualified and committed professors. I'm highly skeptical of the validity any of the new assessment tests for graduating college seniors.

That said, how much a kid learns in college has a lot to do with the particular college, the commitment and age of the professor, and the major they choose. If you go to a third tier college, with a lot of commuters, and take classes with a bunch of old farts, you're not going to learn much. Actually, if you go to a top tier school, where the faculty is too busy to actually teach the courses themselves, you aren't going to learn much either. If you choose correctly, then you'll have a feast of ideas and information.

Third, let's deal with the entrepreneurship crap. Do you know how many people I know who are trying to start their own businesses? I'm talking gluten-free cheese crackers, jewelry, consultancy, online this and that, iPhone apps, books. Every miserable commuter in the city has his dream of starting his own micro-brew shop (I'm looking at you, Steve) or cornering the market with artisanal pickles. And nobody is making it big, because you either need a buttload of cash or a one-in-a-million idea or mad programming skillz to make it big as an entrepreneur.

It's really foolish of Thiel to tell kids to drop out of school and create their own Facebook. It's cruel, really. I love that outsiders like Thiel are questioning the status quo and making bold pronouncements like "College is an Education Bubble," because the system is in major need of repair and we need more contrarians in the world. But I wish he had done a little homework first.