 Should high school gifted programs be banned?
timwiseman: A properly handled honors/gifted/advanced high school course can be a great benefit.You seem to assume that those who would be in such a program want to start a startup.  Most people simply do not want to do that at all.  Startup founders are a very small percentage of the population, and while it is growing it is likely to remain very small (and successful startup founders are a relatively small percentage of startup founders at that....)Even for those that do, few of them do or should have started work on the startup during high school.As to academia, there is certainly a correlation with people in those programs and people that go into academia, but I think the causal connection is relatively weak.  And if they want to go into academia, that is not a bad thing.  It is not a path I would choose, but it is not bad for many.As for your point about picking a major, I do not know about all programs, but the one I was in certainly did not discriminate against any majors.  Even if it did, that would be a force easily resisted as soon as you left that program and went into an actual college.  And for that matter, many people change majors at least once (went through 3).As a whole, they are beneficial to their students.