Palantir CEO Alex Karp says this type of prestigious college grad is doomed. People with expert knowledge will ‘make a lot more money’

“If you’re the kind of person who was going to go to Yale, and you have a high classical IQ, and you have general but not specific knowledge, you’re influenced,” Karp recently said in a magazine interview. Axios. “There are some schools you should probably go to, otherwise go to the cheapest school and come to Palantir – or just come here.”

The CEO admitted that he chose Yale because he has family members there, and it’s actually one of the few colleges he says students should attend, with the exception of Stanford. But his general feeling is that attending an elite college in the United States is not a one-way ticket to success. It reflects his many assertions that higher education is no longer a reliable training ground for the next cohort of movers and shakers; Earlier this year, Palantir launched a merit fellowship to keep high school students from attending college and working at the $439 billion defense technology company instead.

Given this fragile job market, Karp says he believes Ivy League degree holders won’t always be the ones who achieve greatness. Instead, these will be those with knowledge of a specific field—those who ask questions like, “How can I attribute the problem to this complex device going wrong, which would otherwise be fixed by a Japanese engineer, when I am a high school graduate?”

“These people are going to make a lot of money, especially because you can turn it any way you want,” Karp explained. “Within a relatively quick period of time, you will get paid for the value you create.”

Meritocracy and Karp’s disdain for elite colleges

The leader of Palantir — a technology company that has faced controversy over providing software to ICE and performing data analytics for the U.S. military — has long criticized higher education for not preparing students for the real world.

“Everything you learned in your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp said. CNBC In an interview earlier this year.

Even when evaluating which talent to hire for his own company, he doesn’t care if the applicants have attended a prestigious university. He says he believes working at Palantir is the ultimate credential to put a resume into the world of technology, and he’s even recruiting teenagers to join his operation.

“If you didn’t go to school, or you went to a school that wasn’t great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantir resident — no one cares about the other stuff,” Karp said during the company’s Q2 2025 earnings call. “This is by far the best credential in technology. If you come to Palantir, your career will be set.”

Expressing its dedication to keeping budding talent away from “indoctrinated” colleges, Palantir started the Merit Fellowship in April this year. The four-month paid internship is aimed at recent high school graduates who have not already attended university. Requiring Ivy League-level test scores to qualify, the program attracted more than 500 applicants, with only 22 members of Generation Z making it through.

“Vague admissions standards at many American universities have displaced merit and excellence,” the fellowship announcement said. “As a result, qualified students are denied education on the basis of subjective and shallow standards. In the absence of merit, universities have become fertile ground for extremism and chaos.”

During this period, students learned about US history and the foundations of the West, and worked alongside full-time Palantir employees solving technical problems and improving products. Fellows will conclude the program this month after choosing to give up their university degrees, and those who “outperform” will be given the opportunity to interview for a full-time position with the company.