21 car century insurance: The question that made the room go cold

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The universities may be worse than ever in terms of being in the hands of people who hate you, but parents know that the credentialing system in the private sector demands a degree, so they send their kids anyway -- and I don't fault them for that.

But here's a glimmer of hope.

A major software company has announced that something has to change in how it recruits people, because it can no longer rely on the Ivy League to produce -- or even admit in the first place -- the most dynamic and qualified candidates. A lot of talent is being missed, they said -- universities are turning out boring rule followers rather than original thinkers.

So they're instead running four-month-long fellowships, beginning with a five-week crash course in Western civilization.

Some students are doing the fellowship before college, and others instead of college. I'd rather have four years at a company when I'm 22, students are saying, than sitting home hoping to be hired by that company.

"What we're trying to build is what we think the college environment should be — and do it in five weeks," said the man who directs the program. "The mission is to support, sustain, and resuscitate the most important institutions, both commercial and government, in the West, in the United States in particular."

And instead of paying for it, as you would in college, they pay you, to the tune of $5400 per month.

Fellows who excel get an opportunity to interview for full-time employment, so it's an inside track rather than a guarantee.

Now when I tell you that the company is Palantir, people will be upset because they don't like what that company does.

I get it. That is not the point. The point is: a company is beginning to compete with the four-year college brain grinder -- and it will not be the last such company.

Anything that starts to chip away at what we laughingly call our "higher education" system and the script it expects students to follow is a good thing, and we can hope it spreads far and wide.

You probably know that the financial establishment has a script, too, and it's to "stay the course" in your 60/40 portfolio, and other advice built for a bygone world.

In 2009 my friend Joe Withrow was a young banker at Wells Fargo, working on the mortgage modifications everybody was scrambling to push through after the housing crash. In a morning meeting he asked a simple question: was anybody tracking loan-to-value on these modifications?

The room went cold. Joe was told to keep his head down.

That's when he figured out the system wasn't built to help the homeowner; it was built to make a political problem disappear.

In other words, Joe wasn't the boring rule follower. He was the original thinker the system didn't want. So he went his own way -- very successfully, I might add.

Next week, Tuesday through Saturday, October 6-10, Joe is hosting a free online summit. Sixteen independent analysts, several of them also friends of mine, will cover where to put your money now that the old rulebook has been thrown out:

gold and Bitcoin
real estate, mortgage notes, and even music royalties
becoming your own banker
tax strategy (one speaker once owed the IRS $1.3 million and clawed his way out)
privacy, and internationalizing your assets

As I say, some of these folks I know personally, and in fact for those of you coming to my supporters Christmas party this year, you'll meet Marc Tancer in person.

These aren't TV pundits. No Jim Cramer here, thank goodness. These are operators who actually do what they teach.

It's free. It's the kind of education you won't get from a university -- which, by the way, would expect you to pay the price of your first house in exchange. No, thanks!

Register here:

https://www.tomwoods.com/summit

Tom Woods