Why do we even need college, critics demand? Can't we do it all on our own?Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has urged students to drop out and has even subsidized themincluding several of our undergraduates -- to leave college and pursue their individual entrepreneurial dreams.After all, the logic goes, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out and they seem to have done OK.Well, yes. But we should remember: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had Harvard to drop out of.Harvard to serve as the place where their world-changing discoveries were born.Harvard and institutions like it to train the physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, business analysts, lawyers,and thousands of other skilled individuals upon whom Facebook and Microsoft depend.Harvard to enlighten public servants to lead a country in which Facebook, Microsoft, and companies like them can thrive.Harvard to nurture the writers and filmmakers and journalists who create the storied "content" that gives the Internet its substance.