May 20, 2012 7:02 PM

Dropping out: Is college worth the cost?

Eden Full: Challenged in the wrong ways. I wasn't challenged in the things that I was interested in and so I struggled a lot.

Sujay Tyle: I was a pre-med student at Harvard. And so I was challenged. But as Eden said, not in the ways I wanted to be.

Alex Kiselev is not a Harvard man. He was at a community college when he won his fellowship with a plan to manufacture scientific instruments more cheaply.

Alex Kiselev: Looking at how my parents went through debt, it's really debilitating for the first five to 10, even maybe 15, 20 years of your life. Especially if you don't find a very high-paying job, as is always promised.

Peter Thiel: Close to half of the fellows have started businesses at this point. A number of them have received funding from outside investors. I think that across the board, the sense is that they are progressing a lot more with their lives than had they stayed in college.

Easy for him to say. He has degrees in philosophy and law.

Morley Safer: There's no question you're a very smart guy. There's no question you're a very successful one. Do you think you could have done this without your educational background?

Peter Thiel: There may have been something specific at Stanford University, but I think if I had gone to any of a number of other universities it would have been actually quite bad. If I would have gone to Harvard, I would have been tracked to become an investment banker. And I would never even have considered anything else.

Instead he chose an even more lucrative career and now lives a predictable pampered billionaire's life -- intensely private, demanding, uncomfortable -- almost mimicking his hero Howard Hughes. The Silicon Valley version of a temperamental prima donna.

Publicly, he puts millions into some outlandish projects like funding labs determined to extend life by centuries and floating sea colonies -- still in the model stage -- that would be libertarian utopias where American law would not apply.

[Stanford student: I just really wanted to meet you, I'm a big libertarian."

Peter Thiel: All right. Thanks.]

His uncompromising belief in low taxes and minimal government has made him a libertarian cult hero.

Professor Wadhwa says Thiel's billions have clouded his thinking.

Vivek Wadhwa: Peter Thiel has made so much money that he's out of touch with the real world. He doesn't meet common people. He doesn't understand their needs. He doesn't understand how important education is for the masses. You can take 24 children and make them successful by giving them on the job training. But that's not a lesson for the rest of America. What I worry about is a message that's getting out there to America that it's okay to drop out of school -- that you don't have to get college. Absolutely dead wrong.

Morley Safer: The current crop of fellows, where do you think they'll be, say, five, 10 years from now?

Vivek Wadhwa: The majority of them will fail. And they're gonna regret not having completed their education.

Already one company started a year ago by a 19-year-old Thiel fellow who had raised a million and a half in outside cash is struggling.

[Peter Thiel at finalist event: So what have you been up to?]

But Thiel says it's still early in the process and getting rich isn't the point.

His fellows say they can always return to college if things don't work out.

Alex Kiselev: Of course we're destined to fail. That's what entrepreneurship is. That's what-- when you try to do something new, the chances are you're gonna fail. And I think that in-- when we're 21 or 22, whenever-- all of our friends are graduating college, I think we'll be far more likely to succeed than they will be.

Morley Safer: I think it's fair to say you're enjoying the controversy you've started, correct?

Peter Thiel: I don't enjoy being contrarian.

Morley Safer: Yes, you do.

Peter Thiel: No, I think it's much more important to be right than to be contrarian.

Morley Safer: Do some of your fellow entrepreneurs think that you're sometimes a little bit nuts for the kind of things that you support?

Peter Thiel: You know, it doesn't matter to me whether people think it's crazy or not. What matters is whether we're doing something to make the world a better place.

Morley Safer: And you really feel that you are?

Peter Thiel: If you could convince me that I wasn't, then I'd stop.

And perhaps move to one of his utopian offshore nation states -- where only big ideas flourish and school's permanently out for everybody.



© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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