Higher learning is just an overpriced, speculative investment that typically rewards graduates with dismal career prospects, says billionaire Peter Thiel

Billionaire libertarian businessman Peter Thiel, the founder and former CEO of PayPal, is perhaps best known as the venture capitalist who gave Facebook the angel investment it needed to really get started. But, increasingly, he's getting attention for his controversial views on higher learning. Last year, he launched the Thiel fellowship, which gives grants as large as $100,000 to 20 tech entrepreneurs who drop out of college by age 20 to pursue their own ideas. Then, in a National Review interview earlier this year, Thiel said that higher education is a "bubble in the classic sense," because education is "overpriced," something people have "an intense belief in," and an investment that's unlikely, in the majority of cases, to have a positive return. He made the point again last week at TechCrunch. Given the "financial disaster" of student loan debt surpassing credit card debt, does Thiel have a point?

No, education isn't about returns on an investment: The concept of the education bubble is based on horrifying, false logic, says Freddie deBoer at L'Hote. "To see an education, college or otherwise, as merely a way to increase the amount of money you make is a terrible corruption and fundamentally unsustainable." Increasing earning potential was never meant to be the sole purpose of education, and if it's reduced to that, we're all in trouble.

Well, college is overpriced: College has gotten too expensive, with state governments cutting aid to public universities, says E.D. Kain in Forbes. But let's not abandon institutions of higher learning. If needed, we should raise taxes to make public universities more affordable. "Yes, education costs money. But that money should not fall squarely on the heads of middle class kids who are forced to take out tens of thousands in debt just to attend school."

And grad school is a particularly poor investment: College is still a good decision for most young Americans, but I can't say the same about grad school, says Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. Grad school has become a socially acceptable way to drink beer, read, and go into massive debt in your 20s. "Upper-middle-class Americans tend to overvalue the non-financial benefits of grad school." Thiel's wrong about a lot. But at least he's "challenging the cultural assumptions that cause a lot of people to make bad life decisions."

Section 5. Picture

Опьянение.

UNIT 8

Section 1. Практикум Линн Виссон

Текст 16

Вопрос о национальном опыте в области народонаселения (ООН, 1998)

National Experience with Population Issues (UN, 1998)

(Читается с американским акцептом)

Section 2. Phrasal Verbs

PUT

Section 3. Typical Drill

Упражнение 1. Read and boil down the story to one sentence.

1.Marvel Comics has unveiled a new half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man, who replaces the recently killed-off Peter Parker. Parker died in Ultimate Spider-Man Issue 160 in June during a fight with his bitter enemy, Green Goblin. Like Parker, Morales is a geeky, working-class teenager from the boroughs of New York City. Morales lives with his black and Latino parents in ethnically diverse Brooklyn, while Parker was white and raised by his aunt and uncle in a mainly white neighbourhood in Queens. The Marvel editor-in-chief, whose mother was from England and father from Mexico, said he cried when Barack Obama was elected president "partly because he was African-American but largely because of the fact that he was mixed race".

2. Traditionally, this poison has been used by hunters to kill elephants. the African crested rat chews the roots and bark of a highly toxic tree, and then smears the lethal mixture on its specially adapted fur. Any animals that attack receive a mouthful of potentially deadly poison. It is the first time that this behaviour has been reported in a mammal, the researchers writeBut the team, from the UK, Kenya and New York, are still puzzled by how the rodent is able to survive a dose of the toxin, which comes from the poison arrow tree

4. Visitors to a leading theme park have been complaining about the bad breath of fellow passengers as they scream their way through the rides. Thorpe Park in Surrey has now decided to offer a mouthwash to customers after receiving an increasing number of complaints, especially as temperatures have risen in recent weeks. Garlic and cigarettes are the most common odours causing the biggest stink.

5. Earth may once have had two moons, the one that shines at night today and a smaller companion, according to a new theory. A collision between the two is believed to have created the mountainous highlands on the moon's far side that have long puzzled scientists. The side of the moon facing the Earth and the side facing away have strikingly different topographies.

6. Tourist shops in Scotland's capital have been banned from playing loud bagpipe music out into the streets. Edinburgh City Council environmental officers began patrolling the city's "tartan shops" this week to make sure traders do not break rules which came into force on Monday. The ban follows complaints about some retailers playing loud bagpipe music through speakers outside their shops. Complaints were also made about rails and baskets of products blocking the pavement.

7.The world's "most expensive and exclusive" potatoes are to go on sale across the UK for the first time this week at a major supermarket.The variety, La Bonnotte, which is normally only grown on a small island off France, can sell for up to £400 per kilogram.However, Tesco has sourced a new supply, grown on Jersey, and will be selling them from Tuesday for the equivalent of £2.65 per kilo.

8.A woman who dressed like a man and drew a beard on her face has robbed an Alabama bank, authorities said. Police said the suspect robbed the Cottondale branch of the Bank of Tuscaloosa and she may have been involved in another bank heist earlier this month. Witnesses told officers she had a "drawn on" beard when she entered the bank. Police said she told tellers she had a bomb and demanded money after placing a device on a counter.

9.The emergence and decline of gigantic flying insects millions of years ago may have been linked to the amount of oxygen available to their water-breathing young, new research has suggested.

Scientists studying the smaller modern-day descendants of the huge creatures, which included dragonflies with wingspans of almost a metre, believe they have solved a question which has puzzled experts for more than 100 years by looking at their larvae, which live in water. They believe that larvae 300 million years ago took advantage of the higher oxygen levels available, using it to help fuel their growth to the size shown in ossilized remains found by palaeontologists today.

10. From time to time, life here on Earth is rudely disturbed by the unexpected arrival of something from out of the heavens. They may tumble from a height of merely few hundred feet; they may plummet from outer space itself. Consider the recent story of the residents of Beebe, a village in the US state of Arkansas, whose new year celebrations were interrupted by the sudden appearance of thousands of blackbirds falling to their death (pictured).The deceased birds were "littering the streets, the yards, the driveways, everywhere", according to Robby King, a county wildlife officer. "It was hard to drive down the street in some places without running over them."

Section 4. Have Your Say