Imagine spending hundreds of years building the most prestigious higher education system on Earth, only to throw it all away for some social engineering stuff. That’s essentially the story of US academia over the last two decades: meritocracy got swapped out for DEI statements, tenure tracks filled with ideological conformity rather than intellectual rigor, and admissions morphed into a carefully calibrated diversity puzzle where academic excellence became optional. The result is a growing pipeline of second-class professors, bloated admin overhead, and – critically- mediocre students who talk a big game about “systems of oppression” but struggle to write a coherent email. So when companies like Palantir look at the talent coming out of elite schools and see vibes instead of value, you get… this: a 22-person experiment pulling high school grads straight into real work with real stakes and real expectations.
And it’s working, not because it’s utopian or even scalable…. yet, but because it’s a rational response to a broken trust. If elite universities no longer guarantee elite talent, companies will build their own Ivy League replacements. That means fellowships instead of freshman year, seminars on the West (and classics!) instead of DEI workshops, and live product teams instead of mock case competitions. This is the beginning of a parallel educational-industrial complex, one where the filter is competence, not credentials. And as more CEOs realize that traditional academia is turning out brand liabilities, not assets, expect this model to go from edge-case to blueprint. Universities were supposed to be the gatekeepers of excellence. Now they’re the reason companies are building new gates. WSJ
