Earlier this year the foundation gave a group of young fellows $100k and two years of mentoring in exchange for quitting college. The experiment is still playing out. But they’re accepting applications for the next group. Here, the heads of the foundation make their case.

To overworked high school seniors anxiously filing college applications, we have some good news. You don’t have to go. To 19-year-old college students ripe with talent we have even better news: You can leave.

Your parents won’t tell you this, guidance counselors won’t tell you this, and university administrators, test prep companies, politicians, a nearly $1 trillion student loan industry, and other unscrupulous profiteers won’t tell you that you don’t have to go. They want you to believe that college is a guaranteed gateway to a successful career and that they’ll help you get there. But you already have what it takes to achieve great things and the price for what college offers–a wicked cocktail of debt, status, insurance, and consumption–is a scam.

Last year, the Tiel Foundation decided to start a revolution.We wanted to get smart kids out of the classroom and to the frontiers of knowledge quicker so they could start building America’s next great innovative companies. We created the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship. We have 24 people under the age of twenty who have decided to skip college–before debt cripples their horizons–and start changing the world through entrepreneurship. In the first few months of their fellowship, they’ve already founded companies, raised capital, won prestigious awards, and put products on the market. We’re now taking applications for the second class of fellows. The deadline is December 31st.  For more info check out the Thiel Fellowship.