Dale J. Stephens
| Dale J. Stephens | |
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| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Website | www.uncollege.org |
Dale Jasper Stephens is an American entrepreneur, speaker, and author, best known as one of the original 24 recipients of the Thiel Fellowship. He is also the founder of UnCollege, which is a social movement that aims to change the notion that going to college is the only path to success.
Stephens is a self-described "elementary school dropout," as he was unschooled for the majority of his childhood. Unschooling is a form of homeschooling that emphasizes real world experiences and student chosen subject matter. While his peers attended middle school and high school, Stephens took college classes, started businesses, lived in France, worked on political campaigns, and helped build a library. At the age of 17, he tweeted the founder of Zinch, which led to an internship.
Stephens briefly attended Hendrix College in Arkansas, but dropped out before completing his second semester. He was frustrated with aspects of his college experience, stating that college "rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application."
In 2010, Stephens applied for the Thiel Fellowship, a program founded by Peter Thiel which grants fellows $100,000 to forego college for two years and focus on their passions. Stephens initially applied with a proposal for a budget transatlantic airline, and already forged contracts with Boeing, Southwest Airlines, and several airport authorities in connection with the project. Stephens was instead accepted as one of the original 24 Thiel fellows to pursue work as an educational futurist through his website, UnCollege. He credits the Thiel 'brand' for many of his recent successes, including his upcoming book and heavy media attention.
In 2011, Stephens founded UnCollege, which provides resources to students that wish to educate themselves outside of the realm of traditional higher education. The site is inspired by Stephens' background in unschooling and his frustrations with the college experience. He states that his goal with UnCollege is not to take down universities, but encourage more people to consider the opportunity cost of attending college.
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