Is College Losing Its Shine? Palantir Thinks So

On a quiet morning in Denver, a group of teenagers in hoodies and sneakers were finalizing data models for Palantir, the secretive defense tech company that powers parts of the U.S. intelligence network. None of them were in college. Some hadn’t even graduated high school.

They were part of Palantir’s new experiment: the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month program designed to prove that universities might no longer be the only gateway to a good career. The first cohort, twenty-two students selected from over five hundred applicants, spent their summer immersed in two things: a crash course in Western civilization and U.S. history, followed by direct work on live Palantir projects.

These students, affectionately called Palanteens, weren’t your average interns. They had test scores on par with Ivy League entrants but chose to skip the traditional path. Palantir has hinted that those who perform well will move straight into full-time positions, thereby bypassing the multi-year, debt-filled ritual of higher education altogether.

This isn’t an isolated gesture. It’s a shot across the bow of an American system that once promised prosperity in exchange for four years of college lectures and tuition bills that could fund a mortgage. That promise now looks increasingly fragile.

A recent Gallup poll shows that 70% of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction, the highest disapproval ever recorded. More than half say universities do a poor or fair job preparing students for real-world employment. And the numbers don’t get kinder after graduation.

According to a Kickresume study, 58% of Americans who finished college last year still don’t have stable work. A decade or two ago, that figure hovered around 25%. Many graduates now juggle multiple part-time gigs while servicing debt that can take decades to repay.

For a growing number of families, the math no longer adds up. Average tuition and fees at private colleges have surpassed $42,000 a year, while public universities now cost more than $10,000 annually for in-state students. Add rent, books, and food, and the total can easily double. What once symbolized ambition now feels like a financial trap.

Palantir’s fellowship is part of a new philosophy spreading across the tech world: hire for ability, not for pedigree. The company, known for its close ties to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, believes that the best talent might not be sitting in a lecture hall but waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves.

Critics, however, worry this approach may not scale. Colleges, for all their flaws, remain more than training centers. They are spaces for social growth and exposure to diverse thought. Yet even that argument is losing strength as students question the value of paying six figures to learn from overworked professors.

The irony is that the data still favors higher education, at least statistically. The Census Bureau reports that households led by someone with a bachelor’s degree earn a median income of $132,700, more than double the $58,410 earned by households led by high school graduates. Over two decades, that gap has widened steadily.

But averages can be deceptive. The returns depend heavily on what you study, where you study, and how you use the degree. A computer science major at Stanford will likely out-earn a communications graduate from a struggling regional college. The era when “a degree is enough” has ended.

What Palantir and similar companies are betting on is not the death of education but its reinvention. They argue that the skills that matter most, such as adaptability, critical thinking, data literacy, problem-solving, can be learned outside the academy, faster and cheaper. Apprenticeships, and bootcamps like theirs are a modern echo of an older tradition: learning by doing.

This shift has already begun to ripple through Silicon Valley. Google and IBM no longer require degrees for many technical roles. Venture capital firms are investing in alternative education platforms. Even the U.S. government has expanded apprenticeship programs in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Still, the divide between promise and practicality remains sharp. A teenager might enter Palantir’s fellowship and succeed brilliantly. But not every seventeen-year-old can code quantum algorithms or analyze defense data. College, despite its flaws, still offers time to mature — something that can’t always be replaced by four months in a tech lab.

Yet the signal is clear: the monopoly of the university is breaking. Employers are beginning to value competence over credentials, output over diplomas. If the 20th century was the age of the degree, the 21st may belong to those who can prove skill without parchment proof.

When the first Palanteens graduate later this month, some will likely walk straight into six-figure jobs without ever writing a college essay. To critics, that’s an indictment of academia. To supporters, it’s liberation.

Either way, Palantir has cracked open a conversation that will shape a generation. What makes someone employable? Is it four years of theory or four months of application? As higher education grapples with falling enrollment and public trust, the answer may depend less on institutions and more on who dares to learn differently.