Dale Stephens

KQED wrote in 2015 that at 18 he followed his parents’ advice and enrolled at a small private college in ArkansasArkansasArkansas is a U.S. state bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital and largest city is Little Rock. Arkansas was admitted to the Union on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 3,011,524.Open the full entry; in an article of April 2011 he himself describes it as a liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, and Digital Trends and other sources name it as Hendrix College.⁠[1][2][3]

The Daily Orange, in an article of February 14, 2011, called him a 19-year-old freshman at Hendrix College; he said there that college was easier than he had expected, but attributed this to college becoming easier across the board rather than to his own intelligence or a lack of demanding courses. The article added that after a trip to the Netherlands in the fall he did not plan to return to Hendrix College, because UnCollege would take up most of his time.⁠[4]

KQED wrote that during his first year he grew frustrated with large classes and with lectures he considered pointless; in a Religion 101 class, when the professor showed a film about Shabbat dinners, he walked out and informed the professor that if showing movies was his idea of good teaching, he should not be a professor; he then filed his papers to leave. CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry wrote in 2015 that he quickly became disillusioned with and detached from what he was learning.⁠[1][5]

Accounts of when and how he left differ: he himself wrote in an article of April 13, 2011 that he had dropped out of the liberal arts college; Digital Trends wrote on May 25, 2011 that he had dropped out of Hendrix College “last year”; BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry wrote in 2016 that he dropped out of Hendrix College in 2011 to accept a $100,000 fellowship from Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry; Pacific Standard wrote in 2014 that he dropped out before finishing his freshman year; the HuffPost UK interview states that he left after six months of college.⁠[2][3][6][7][8]

On January 21, 2011, while still enrolled at Hendrix College, he launched the UnCollege website; The Daily Orange wrote that its long-term goal was to offer an alternative to traditional higher education by connecting students with mentors who help them learn from experience and from projects of their own design. The HuffPost UK interview likewise gives January 21, 2011 as the date UnCollege was launched.⁠[4][8]

The Daily Orange wrote that the idea came out of an exchange among friends: his friend Rebecca Goldman, a sophomore at Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry who also sat on UnCollege’s board, recalled that they were brainstorming by email when she proposed that they “start our own college a la the movie ‘Accepted.’” KQED wrote in 2015 that the idea came after he watched the film Accepted, in which a high-school senior rejected by every college he applies to creates his own school, and talked late into the night with his best friend. A photo caption in The Dartmouth states that Rebecca Goldman and he founded UnCollege.⁠[4][1][9]

He said in The Daily Orange article that rather than complain about higher education he chose to “channel my frustrations to have a positive impact on the world.”⁠[4]

Accounts of his age when he founded UnCollege differ: CNBC wrote in 2015 that he was 19, while the HuffPost UK interview gives 20; CNBC wrote that UnCollege was created in January 2011 as a social movement challenging the traditional idea of higher education and whether it is worth its cost.⁠[5][8]

The Daily Orange wrote on February 14 that three weeks after the site went live ten students had enrolled, that the program was to begin in the fall, and that he hoped for about 50 in the first class, saying that the main challenge was convincing people that UnCollege was viable; UnCollege had no traditional graduation, students had to complete at least 15 projects across three domains (introspection, experience and application), and the mandatory projects included living abroad for three months, more than 200 hours of volunteering and a “This I Believe” essay; tuition was about $100 a month to cover hosting and curriculum development, and all interaction took place through the website. Demetri Sampas, a sophomore business major at Pacific Lutheran University, was involved in the idea and was helping him set up UnCollege’s structure.⁠[4]

He said in the article: “I believe I can succeed in the real world without a college degree”; the article notes that he had heard criticism that people cannot do anything without a college degree, and had also been overwhelmed with compliments and offers of help.⁠[4]

The Dartmouth wrote on February 27 that UnCollege had first gained national attention when The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote about its launch in early February; about a month after the program began 15 students had enrolled, and he expected 30 in the first year. The graduation requirements also included attending a conference; there were no grades, and students worked with mentors who gave feedback, with peer “accountability buddies” helping them keep their commitments; UnCollege’s website gave the tuition as $100 per student. The board consisted of himself, Rebecca Goldman and Alice Floros, a sophomore at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and he planned to seek non-profit status for UnCollege.⁠[9]

In The Dartmouth article he argued that traditional schooling neglects “soft” skills such as communication and mainly trains students to follow directions, and that its classical model was built during the Industrial Revolution to produce factory workers; he hoped that UnCollege might eventually supplement and partly replace traditional college, though he did not expect it to replace the college system entirely, and said that “competency trumps certification.”⁠[9]

On April 13, 2011 he published the article “Living the Knowledge Life: A Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry Finalist’s Response” on TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry, describing himself as one of the finalists for the Thiel Fellowship and as a “lifelong and lifewide learner”; the author note describes him as a 19-year-old “educational deviant” and entrepreneur leading UnCollege, a social movement supporting self-directed higher education, and building a platform to validate lifelong learning.⁠[2]

On May 25, 2011 Peter Thiel announced the first Thiel Fellows; Dale Stephens was among them, in the “Career Development” group together with Daniel Friedman, Paul GuPaul GuPaul Gu is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Upstart, an AI lending platform, and a member of the first class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry and Eric McKay. TechCrunch wrote that the 24 fellows had been chosen from more than 400 applicants under 20 and that each would receive $100,000 over the two-year program together with mentorship from Thiel’s network.⁠[10][10]

Digital Trends wrote the same day that the 19-year-old led UnCollege with the title “chief educational deviant” and that if the group had a rebel, it was he; a product of homeschooling, he advocated more self-direction in education, focusing on learning and experience rather than curriculum, and wrote on his site that “you must differentiate to succeed”; the Thiel Foundation now funded his projects.⁠[3]

GOOD wrote on May 28 that UnCollege was “a social movement that applies the methods of unschooling,” the self-directed form of homeschooling with which he had been raised, to higher education, and that he planned to use the fellowship to create Radmatter, a platform meant to “revolutionize how we develop and demonstrate talent in the twenty-first century.”⁠[11]

Pacific Standard wrote in 2014 that Peter Thiel chose him on the basis of a proposal for a budget international airline, and that he later shifted his focus to promoting the idea that college is not the only path to success. Bloomberg wrote in 2016 that he put the fellowship money toward UnCollege.⁠[7][6]

The ABA Journal wrote on August 25, 2011 that he was among the inaugural recipients of the “20 Under 20” program, a home-schooled 19-year-old offered $100,000 to skip college and focus on his own business, who had created UnCollege for people in similar situations and was writing a book.⁠[12]

eSchool News wrote on July 8, 2011 that the 19-year-old was living in San Francisco, building the UnCollege movement while developing a web-based company; he said: “I want to change the notion that a college degree is the only path to professional success.”⁠[13]

On July 18 he published a column in Fast Company whose headline said that he had dropped out of college, moved to Silicon Valley and started the talent-scouting RadMatter; the magazine noted that the inaugural class of Thiel Fellows was blogging about their experiences for Fast Company. In the piece he wrote that he was at the San Francisco airport on his way to speak at TEDxPlazaCibeles in Madrid; he called himself an evangelist for RadMatter, describing it as a platform revolutionizing how people and institutions develop and demonstrate talent; and he was writing a book on gaining the “street skills” needed for success in today’s global entrepreneurial economy.⁠[14]

He wrote in the piece that he was not a genius, had not graduated from college at 14, had no special connections, had not attended an Ivy LeagueIvy LeagueThe Ivy League is an intercollegiate athletic conference comprising eight universities in the northeastern United States: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. It was formally established in 1954, with league competition beginning in the 1956–57 academic year. Its athletic framework emphasizes student status, academic standards, and financial aid based on need. The name is also commonly used collectively for the eight member institutions.Open the full entry school and that his parents were not rich; borrowing Mark TwainMark TwainMark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American humorist, journalist, lecturer and novelist. He is known for his travel narratives and for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, novels set in the Mississippi River world of his boyhood.Open the full entry’s words, he wrote that he had “never let my schooling interfere with my education.”⁠[14]

On August 18, 2011 he announced in Fast Company that Perigee/Penguin would publish his book, a practical guide to developing the skills that school does not teach but that success requires, in early 2013; he wrote that this was quick by publishing standards, that he had seven months to write, about half the time authors usually get, and that he still had 61,273 words to write. To make room for it he was doing fewer speaking engagements, had left the RadMatter team and had put a consulting project on hold until he delivered the manuscript. He wrote that in the previous five months he had traveled the world, appeared on national news, received a fellowship and signed the deal. He also wrote that before signing he had talked with editors to see whether there was mutual interest, and that the previous week, while having cider with friends in a London pub, one of two women who sat down at their table turned out to be an editor at “Pearsons.”⁠[15]

TechCrunch wrote on December 6, 2011 that he had recently signed a deal with Penguin Press to publish his forthcoming book, Hacking Your Education. CNBC wrote in 2015 that he first blogged about his dissatisfaction with the higher-education system and that within 18 months those thoughts had become a book, which he sold to Penguin.⁠[16][5]

On September 14, 2011 he published “What Has Being A Thiel Fellow Given Me? Credibility” in Fast Company, writing that this was the first year of the Thiel Fellowship, that the 24 fellows had been chosen from more than 400 applicants and that they did not live together; he wrote that without the fellowship he would certainly still be leading UnCollege, but to whether he would be writing a book or speaking at events he answered “Maybe. Probably. Probably not.”; the fellowship had accelerated his journey through the world, and he did not know where he would be next week or next month, let alone next year: it could be Peru, South Africa or Berlin.⁠[17]

He wrote that the letters “T-H-I-E-L” after his name served as a stamp of approval in place of a college degree: saying “I dropped out of Hendrix” drew puzzled looks, while saying that he was a Thiel Fellow got people’s attention.⁠[17]

On October 10, 2011 he published “How This College Dropout Wants To Change Education” in Fast Company, writing that he had been on this path for six months and that the Thiel Fellowship made his next two years “more or less guaranteed”; he argued that “education is a human problem,” that changing it requires a shift in paradigms rather than only new technology, and that technological solutions will be futile until “we stop worshipping the SAT.”⁠[18]

He wrote in the piece that publishing a book would give him credibility independent of the Thiel Fellowship, which is why he chose to publish through Penguin rather than distribute a PDF on UnCollege.org; he also wrote that brand names matter and that a degree from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry means more than a degree from Hendrix College.⁠[18]

On November 9, 2011 he published an article in Fast Company about Austin Sholwater, a 19-year-old who had left Michigan State University the previous semester and moved to Paris to learn French, and wrote about himself: that year he had flown more than 115,000 miles to nine countries; in October 2011 he had been in Paris to speak at a university; living in San Francisco, he felt complacent in his secure situation and had decided to make himself uncomfortable, the first step being a move to Berlin for two months from January to finish his book.⁠[19]

His author biography at Penguin Random HousePenguin Random HousePenguin Random House is a trade book publishing group headquartered in New York City. It was formed on July 1, 2013, by combining Bertelsmann’s Random House with Pearson’s Penguin, and has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann since 2020. Its roots include Random House, which grew out of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer’s 1925 purchase of The Modern Library and became a general publisher in 1927, and Penguin Books, founded by Allen Lane in 1935. The group operates in more than 20 countries with more than 300 imprints, including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Viking, Dutton, Penguin Press, Crown and Ballantine Books, and had revenue of €4.981 billion in 2025. In 2022 a U.S. federal court blocked its planned acquisition of Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds. Its chief executive is Nihar Malaviya.Open the full entry states that he appeared at TED 2012, appeared on CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry, ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry and NPR, was featured in New York Magazine and Forbes, and wrote for The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry, The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is an American daily newspaper founded in Washington in 1877, known for its role in the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation. Run by the Meyer–Graham family for eighty years from 1933, it has been owned personally by Jeff Bezos since 2013.Open the full entry and Fast Company.⁠[20]

The Cusp Conference presenter page lists his talk at Cusp 2012, calling him an “education hacker”; its biography states that he thinks we pay too much for college and learn too little, that he leads UnCollege, a social movement empowering students to create their own education, that The New York Times among others has covered him and that he has also appeared on CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry, Fox and TechCrunch, that in 2011 he was awarded the Thiel Fellowship, a “no-strings-attached” $100,000 grant enabling him to skip college and focus on his work, research and self-education, and that his first book was to be published by Penguin in early 2013.⁠[21]

On his about.me page he writes that in 2013 he was named to ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry’s “30 Under 30” in Education; Family Action Network’s speaker biography likewise states that Forbes named him to its “30 Under 30” for founding UnCollege.⁠[22][23]

On March 5, 2013 his first book, Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will, credited to Dale J. Stephens, was published. The Penguin Random House book page gives the imprint as Tarcher, the length as 208 pages and the ISBN as 9780399159961; the NPR page credits his photo as courtesy of Perigee. CNBC called it a 100-page book in 2015. Family Action Network’s speaker biography gives the subtitle as “Escape Lectures, Save Thousands, and Hustle Your Way to a Brighter Future.”⁠[20][24][5][23]

The publisher’s description states that college does not prepare students for the real world, that student-loan debt had for the first time surpassed credit-card debt and topped one trillion dollars, and that throngs of unemployed graduates were chasing the same jobs; it presents a new culture of “hackademics,” the author among them, who regard college diplomas as outdated, teaches readers to create their own opportunities and design their own curriculum inside or outside the classroom, and argues that succeeding outside school takes not genius or unusual motivation but curiosity, confidence and grit.⁠[20]

On the day of publication NPR aired an interview with him by Renee Montagne. He explained there that hacking your education means creating your own education: finding mentors, building a network, finding content and combining them in a way that works for you; he said: “I left school because I didn't feel like school was an environment that left me free to learn.”⁠[24]

He also said in the interview: “When you think about education as an investment, you have to think about what the return is going to be”; he argued that, with the average student graduating with $27,000 in debt, committing four years to one institution is the bigger gamble, that the cost of taking a year to learn for yourself is nothing, and that college “will always be there” for anyone who wants to return.⁠[24]

On March 11, 2013 the interview program 33voices published an interview with him (episode 470), which describes him as a Thiel Fellow, UnCollege leader, speaker and author and as an “educational futurist.” Pacific Standard in 2014 gave the book as his proudest accomplishment, and wrote that two years after he dropped out, when he asked about a book-tour stop at Hendrix College, the answer was that he should stay away.⁠[25][7]

EdSurge wrote on September 5, 2013 that he, a member of the first class of “Thiel 20 Under 20 Fellows,” had designed UnCollege’s Gap Year program on the basis of the research for Hacking Your Education, and that it was announced that week. The program lasted one year in four three-month phases: fellows first lived together in a communal house in San Francisco to “learn how to learn,” building inward-facing skills such as communication, perseverance and motivation and outward-facing ones such as building connections and personal branding; they then lived abroad; then took an internship; and finally created a project with real-world value, such as an app, a book, a Kickstarter campaign or a company.⁠[26]

EdSurge wrote that the first class had ten fellows aged 18 to 26 from countries including Germany, Switzerland and Colombia, chosen from about 200 applicants; in selecting them he looked for signs of autonomy and self-direction such as foreign languages, independent projects and extensive travel; the fee was $13,000, covering the first three months of housing in San Francisco and travel and housing stipends while abroad, but not living expenses in the second half; he declined to give quantified success metrics, saying that the goal was financial and emotional independence and lifelong learning skills whether or not the fellows later went to college. CNBC wrote in 2015 that the Gap Year began in September 2013 and that its first class admitted 45 of about 600 applicants.⁠[26][5]

On April 19, 2014 Pacific Standard named him, then 22, among its “30 Top Thinkers Under 30,” describing him as an author, entrepreneur and speaker and one of the 24 original Thiel Fellows. The article described UnCollege as a gap-year program comprising an internship, workshops and three months living in a country where the participant had not lived and did not speak the language, with tuition of $15,000 covering travel and help with a learning plan and giving access to Silicon Valley networks.⁠[7]

He said in the article: “I hope to change the notion that going to college is the only step after high school”; he believes that traditional education rewards rote performance over real learning and that the best learning happens outside the lecture hall. The article states that he never had a dream job and that he saw himself running a creative storytelling agency in ten years; his advice to aspiring unschoolers was: “Spend your time—years—learning whatever subject you want to learn.”⁠[7]

On May 12, 2014 he took part, representing UnCollege, in an episode of KCRW’s To the Point, hosted by Warren Olney, titled “Is Higher Education Really Worth It?”⁠[27]

CNBC wrote on March 13, 2015 that the 23-year-old held the title “chief educational deviant” at UnCollege; he had put $20,000 in speaking fees into UnCollege and had built about 30,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter and a weekly newsletter; UnCollege’s Gap Year, a non-college, non-accredited program, cost $16,000 for a year and included travel, volunteering, internships, work and mentoring from personal coaches, with mentors who had included leaders from AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, Khan Academy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; about half of the participants went on to college and half into the workforce.⁠[5]

The article states that UnCollege had opened a campus in Brazil in fall 2014 and planned to expand the Gap Year to 120 students a year by the end of 2016, though he wanted to grow slowly; the company had seven employees, had raised more than $100,000 from investors, including the founders of General Assembly (spelled “Generally Assembly” in the article), a digital trade school, and Learn Capital, an education-focused venture capital firm in Silicon Valley that had also invested in General Assembly; it had earned about $500,000 in revenue in 2014 and about $800,000 in total, mainly from the tuition of about 65 Gap Year fellows; marketing manager Chris Kelly said that it broke even and had used its earnings to upgrade participants’ housing, sign a travel partner and more. He said that 85% of students received a full-time job offer in their field after the Gap Year.⁠[5]

He said in the article that student debt is especially harmful because it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy; he considered education still a worthwhile investment but said that people should weigh its return and that it should cost less than it does; he regarded the government’s “Student Aid Bill of Rights” as a sign that officials take student debt seriously, but not a full solution.⁠[5]

On November 3, 2015 KQED’s The California Report published a profile of him in its Big Ideas series, calling the 23-year-old an “education futurist.” It wrote that UnCollege.org, which he had founded about four years earlier, is an online program that lets young adults sidestep college and build real-world skills through internships, workshops, online classes and study abroad, which he calls “hacking your education”; UnCollege’s Gap Year offered a year of in-person training and mentorship in a chosen field plus a trip abroad for about $16,000.⁠[1]

In the profile he argued that degrees matter less and less for jobs, pointing to GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry’s dropping of degree requirements for hiring and Ernst & Young and Deloitte following it; he said that the efficacy of education matters more than its cost, while acknowledging that tuition in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry had tripled over the previous 20 years; he believed that parents need to let their children make their own choices so that they can become financially independent. The profile also notes that critics call his philosophy shortsighted and reckless.⁠[1]

Bloomberg wrote on December 2, 2016 that UnCollege, a startup whose very name challenged the value of a university degree, had shifted to a middle path: an intensive post-high-school gap-year program, headquartered in San Francisco; the article quotes his earlier words, “I believe higher education is broken.”⁠[6]

On November 14, 2017 Charlie Taibi, chief executive of Year On, announced the launch of Year On. He wrote that he had taken over as chief executive from Dale Stephens a year earlier; that almost two years before, his friend Dale Stephens had invited him to UnCollege’s company retreat in Carmel, California; that he had been excited by the curriculum Dale Stephens was building for people looking for a college-alternative program; and that Dale Stephens’s vision for such a program was ahead of its time.⁠[28]

Charlie Taibi wrote that UnCollege, as a college-alternative program, had sent students abroad, had them upskill in San Francisco, placed them in internships in their fields of interest, all while working with a coach, graduating 150 fellows from 20 countries; concluding that its curriculum applied to all high-school graduates, the team launched Year On, centered on personal development for students heading to college, with its first cohort to start in October 2018.⁠[28]

He was born in Winters, California; KQED describes Winters as a small rural town in Yolo County where he was born and raised, and Pacific Standard calls it a small town near Sacramento. Pacific Standard writes that his mother is a public-school teacher and his father an engineer.⁠[5][1][7]

Accounts of when he left school differ: he himself wrote in April 2011 that he attended public school through fifth grade, had been unschooled for half his life and had been learning on his own for the previous eight years; the Cusp Conference biography says that his parents let him leave formal schooling after fifth grade; his Penguin Random House author biography, NPR and CNBC say that he left school at 12; The Daily Orange says that he attended public school until sixth grade; KQED says that he chose home-schooling at the age of 5; The Dartmouth says that he was home-schooled until college.⁠[2][21][20][24][4][1][9][5]

Pacific Standard writes that after leaving school he helped build a library, made music, worked on political campaigns, attended conferences, worked at start-ups and spent six months living in France, and that he once informed his mother that his first day of “unschooling” had taught him more than his entire fifth-grade year. CNBC writes that he spent the next seven years educating himself as an unschooler, as many other children in his area were doing at the time, learning French online, helping at a library and studying history on walks and field trips.⁠[7][5]

The HuffPost UK interview, published when he was 21, states that he was home-schooled in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry between the ages of 12 and 18; UnCollege then had 2,000 students, offered a free manifesto, “Your Guide To Academic Deviance,” and was starting to work with colleges and universities around the world that were trying to stay competitive as education changed; its “Hackademic” camps, each bringing together ten young people, were in their seventh session, ran across the United States and were launching in India and Malaysia.⁠[8]

The interview states that UnCollege was launching a new gap year in May: ten selected 18- to 28-year-olds would first spend three months in San Francisco, within 12 months divided into four segments including living abroad, a creative project and an internship, at a price of $12,000 including six months of room and board; it adds that his backing from Peter Thiel put him in a good position to source internships for his students, and he said that companies such as Google approached him most weeks. He also hoped to see the gap-year programs run in countries around the world and to create “UnCollege houses,” micro-communities of self-directed learners.⁠[8]

On his about.me page he writes that since 2011 he had built the team at UnCollege and grown it to $2 million in lifetime revenue, and that as its sole founder he had worked on business and corporate development, strategy, marketing, product development, sales, fundraising and recruiting. The page, which is undated, also states that UnCollege partners with universities to run experiential learning programs for freshmen and that his full-time role as founder focuses on media, partnerships and business development.⁠[22]

In 2011 he wrote a series of columns for Fast Company; the titles listed on his author page include “Rethinking Motivation In Education,” “Alex Peake's ‘Code Hero’: How To Scale Education The Right Way,” “Like Peter Thiel's Fellows, Sebastian Thrun Dropped Out, Hacked Education, Too,” “To Motivate Students, Make Them Give Away Their Rewards” and “Education's Economics Of Scarcity”; the author note says that he was homeschooled and then unschooled, wanted to build a platform called RadMatter, was 19, and was a non-conformist in most areas of his life.⁠[29]

On his about.me page he describes himself as a small-business owner, investor and entrepreneur in San Francisco who writes small checks to early-stage founders personally and has access to larger amounts of capital through a family office; he also writes that he has spoken about youth, education and entrepreneurship to audiences worldwide, from TED to The New York Times.⁠[22]

about.me: Public profile: https://about.me/dalejstephens (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

X: Public account: https://x.com/DaleJStephens (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalejstephens (opens in a new window).⁠[22][23]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/dalejstephens (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]