Last week’s Linked In question centered on the importance of collegiate education for entrepreneurship, building on my most recent paper on baccalaureate education and self-employment. Not surprisingly, the respondents found that formal education provided certain skills and discipline, but what really mattered for success as an entrepreneur was learned outside of the classroom. One individual noted that “college allowed me to explore how to organize my priorities, on my own, to achieve educational success and that was useful in jump starting my various endeavors, taking me to where I am now.” Another person, who had formal entrepreneurship education coursework, found that these courses provided him the necessary skills to develop a business plan and to run his business.
With that said, formal education, according to nearly all of the responses, was not sufficient for would-be entrepreneurs. “Education is an acedemic achievement end of story, it proves not very much at all, if you haven’t the abilities to be successful,” said one respondent. Another replied that the most important skills to have as an entrepreneur are cash and time management, neither of which were taught to his satisfaction in college. To many of the successful entrepreneurs who answered this question, the lessons that were most important to them as a business owner came from the “real world.” For example, a personal finance coach stated the following: “Most of what I learned about being an entrepreneur required personal study outside of my formal education and talking to other seasoned entrepreneurs.”
The lesson for those of us who advocate small business ownership is not that formal education is useless (although some respondents did suggest that). It is clear that collegiate education serves a vital role, especially in terms of providing communication, team-building, and basic managerial skills. Yet, a bachelor’s degree only takes you so far. That is true for those who seek self-employment and also for those who choose to work for someone else. After passing the hurdle of an earned degree, the rest is up to the invidivual. Successful entrepreneurs are those which can translate the lessons of others into new and exciting opportunities for themselves.
Posted by Dawn Rivers Baker on November 4, 2008 at 3:22 pm
When it comes to formal education, it seems to me that there are two different things to consider: what you learn and what you learn how to do.
For entrepreneurs, there is certainly a lot of time, money and business management information that they need to successfully run their business. If such were offered at the college level, it would be of great value (I suspect, however, that many colleges and universities may consider such skills closer to “trade” rather than academic, and prefer teaching courses in economics).
At the same time, other more general skills are often learned in college that can be equally, perhaps even more valuable. For many young people, college is their first experience with being entirely self-directed, developing the self-discipline needed for that, honing their research skills and learning to better distill the information they retrieve. All of these are valuable to the small business owner and all the more so if they did not get those specific practical business management skills in college.
Posted by Jason Rosen on November 5, 2008 at 8:21 pm
This is a great post!
For me the purpose of education is to provide a framework with which to learn how to learn.
In my experience, there is some connection to formal education and business success. It is not as dependent on the major or the specific subjects as much as the discipline, and understanding the relationship of ideas.
For me there is a significant value in education but I believe the correlation is often misunderstood by students and employers.