SACRAMENTO, Calif. - He calls it the UnCollege movement.
Nineteen-year-old Dale Stephens is urging his peers to rethink the need for college, arguing that they can get more out of pursuing real-world skills than completing homework assignments and studying for exams.
"I want to change the notion that a college degree is the only path to professional success," said Stephens, who grew up in Winters and now lives in San Francisco, where he is building the UnCollege movement and developing a Web-based company.
Stephens is part of a small but growing chorus of entrepreneurs, freethinkers and former students who are questioning the value of higher education. The attack is coming from multiple directions: those who say college costs far more than it should; those who say students learn far less than they should; and those who argue the graduation rates are abysmal.
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With tuition rising much faster than inflation, borrowing for college has reached record heights. Two-thirds of graduates now leave school with debt, with the typical borrower owing more than $34,000, according to FinAid.org, an authority on student lending. Nationwide, student debt is likely to top $1 trillion this year signaling to some that education is the next mortgage bubble.
The backlash against college comes, paradoxically, at the same time demand for higher education is soaring. Applications to the University of California and California State University reached record numbers this year.
But it could be that the economic downturn is responsible for both the rise in college applications - as students seek a leg up in the job market - and the sentiment that college isn't necessary, as they take on more debt to get their degrees.
"As family incomes, particularly in the middle class, are stretched and strained, and tuitions rise and state support lessens, (it's not surprising) you would begin to hear voices that say, 'What's the value here?' " said Jerry Lucido, executive director of the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice at the University of Southern California.
The high price of undergraduate education is at risk of hampering technological innovation, said a spokesman for Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook.
"By the time people are 24, 25 or 26 they often have so much student debt and are tracked into certain careers that they can't take a short-term risk and start a company," said Jim O'Neill, who heads the Thiel Foundation.
Last month, the Thiel Foundation named the recipients of its controversial fellowship for people under age 20, giving $100,000 each to 24 students who promised to drop out of college and pursue entrepreneurship.
Stephens was one of them. The money is supporting him for two years while he works on building the UnCollege movement and launching an associated business called RadMatter that's aimed at making it easier for job-hunters to market themselves to employers, regardless of their educational credentials.
Stephens dropped out midway through his freshman year at Hendrix College in Arkansas when he realized that "the direct impact I could have on the world by engaging the community around UnCollege far exceeded the impact I could have by completing homework assignments," he said.
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