Big tech says skip college as schools add AI programs

• Critics warn those CEO-backed programs may train young people for a particular role or company without setting them up for success elsewhere.

State of play: Musk, Karp and Thiel have each suggested that four-year degrees are not worth the investment.

• Thiel's Palantir created the Meritocracy Fellowship, which calls for students to "skip the debt" and "skip the indoctrination" in favor of a four-month "Palantir degree." Its first class included 22 students selected from 500 applicants.
• The Thiel Fellowship, which was founded in 2011, pays people to build projects and startups for two years instead of attending college.

Reality check: Americans are still heading to college after high school in droves, data shows, despite a dip in confidence in higher education.

• Education experts tell Axios that company-run alternatives have a fundamental limitation: The skills and credentials may carry far less value outside the organizations that created them.

• These programs are also highly selective — and often attract students who were likely to succeed with or without them.

Zoom in: The University of Missouri–Kansas City is launching a new AI master's degree this fall.

• It also offers an undergrad computer science degree emphasizing in AI, and an AI minor.

Go deeper: College AI use spikes