‘Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination’: Innovative Big Tech program takes top high school students sans college

A disruptive force is emerging in the college-to-work pipeline: tech giant Palantir is recruiting top high school graduates for an internship that may fast-track their careers – and even help preserve Western civilization.

“Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir degree” is the slogan of the data software company’s Meritocracy Fellowship, a college alternative.

The first cohort of 22 students is wrapping up its four-month tenure, with some now applying for jobs at the firm. Applications recently opened for the 2026 cohort, which is based at the company’s New York City office. 

The program stems from CEO Alex Karp’s belief that “everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” he told CNBC in February while promoting his book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. 

Those ideas include “that you basically should have no beliefs, that the West is inferior, that the intellectual tradition of the West (is wrong),” he said. 

“It leads to self-flagellation and losing on the battlefield, losing intellectually, losing your party, losing your country, losing your border, that your institutions can’t work… It’s actually wrong, and the West was actually never about that.” 

Participants remarked on how they witnessed strong debates on topics such as religion, with some speakers vehemently opposing it and others strongly defending their faith. 

“Nothing is off the table here,” one said in a video posted on the company’s page. “We talk about everything.” 

The program starts with courses on U.S. history and Western civilization, including a trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Students are then assigned to different areas of the company to assist with real products and problems. Those who excel can interview for permanent jobs. 

Karp, who holds a Ph.D., said he hopes to put pressure on universities to reform, especially as the program grows. 

“I would love a thing where the system first of all is more realistic,” he told participants in a video. “You guys probably should go to university, but maybe it should be two years, and half of it should be working. 

“It doesn’t make sense on its own terms, and that’s before you get to the Stalinistic stuff they just want you to regurgitate,” he continued. “And they do force you to regurgitate, because if you don’t, you get low grades. And everyone knows this, and so the whole thing is a farce.” 

Karp went so far as to say universities were promoting a “pagan religion” that “basically says everything that’s good about America – everything that actually works – is ipso facto bad and, by the way, you can’t talk about it not working, because it’s a religion. 

“It’s a new religion, and the tenets are, ‘West is bad. Nothing can work. If it works, it’s bad,’ and that way of thinking has corroded every aspect of (learning). Last, not least, it leads to a situation where you get a complete corrosion of all institutions.” 

The program comes as more Americans are doubting the value of a college education. 

“More than half of Americans say college is not worth the price,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted this week, announcing that federal loan forms would now include data of what graduates can expect to earn after college. 

The number of recent high school graduates attending college has slid from 67% in 1997 to 61% in 2023, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and recent polling from Pew Research found 70% of Americans think higher education is heading in the wrong direction.