Entrepreneurship Programs Serve as Bridge

Business schools, once, largely focused on offering careers in accounting, finance or management. But now graduates of all stripes are clamoring for help navigating a modern workplace where innovation, savvy and hard work often trump book smarts.

The topic of entrepreneurship education and the debate over whether entrepreneurship can be taught at all have been around for years but are rapidly growing in visibility. The White House also refers to the data from the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship and its role in the economy; that asserts net new job growth comes almost exclusively from young companies. Even President Obama has made entre­pre­neur­ship and new business creation a cornerstone of his economic recovery plans.

But for universities, entrepreneurship itself is relatively new as a field of study. There’s less research and fewer textbooks to support it than other subjects, leaving some schools to struggle with how to best build it into the curriculum. There are many benefits to programs like these as they encourage creativity, stretch students outside of their comfort zones, and provide basic financial management skills that will serve students whether or not they end up as entrepreneurs. However, these programs are going to have a large, measurable effect on the number of startup companies coming from young alumni, because they simply do not and cannot address the barriers to entry that young entrepreneurs face when it comes to starting a company, namely a lack of experience and a lack of capital.

Encouraging students to believe that they can become successful entrepreneurs is wonderful; however, teachers need to strike a balance between such encouragement and reality. Students need to know that entrepreneurship is tough and perhaps look at it as an option for the future, or as a way of creating a secondary income, not as their golden ticket to wealth and autonomy. Even those for whom it does make sense right now must always have a plan B (and plan C, and D, etc.).

An academic bridge

• Students from across George Mason University’s Northern Virginia campuses were eligible to enroll in a minor program focused on entre­pre­neur­ship at the start of the academic year. It’s an undertaking that was three years in the making. Mahesh Joshi, an associate professor of management, was one of the program’s architects. The classes build on a growing belief at George Mason that entre­pre­neur­ship should not belong to any one department, he said. “If business schools said that creative ideas can only come from the school of business, it would be to their detriment,” Joshi said. “They can arise anywhere. I ask students to interview successful entrepreneurs, and then I ask them to check their functional background. Most of them don’t have a business degree,” he added.

• The University of Maryland in College Park has made similar efforts to blend academic programs. As the university introduces more interdisciplinary courses to its curriculum, the business school has devised entrepreneurship classes for students in journalism and engineering, among others.

The universities say these programs are poised for growth as demand among students climbs. Graduates today are less likely than their parents to work in just one career field and high-profile young entrepreneurs have made the prospect of self-employment seem more attainable.