What does your grandma tell you? “Honey, you need to go to college so you can go out and get a real job!” Or the college, “Students, this is a list of the top 10 paying professions in America right now. And guess what, you can do four of them!”
This is how I was brought up, and I can guarantee this is what you have heard as well.
The truth is, colleges are nothing more than incubators for mindless information workers. For some, that is their calling. I am not disputing that. Some people are more than happy going out, getting a job, and hoping for the best in the 3 waking hours they have left after a long week at the office.
As far as my college goes, Mercyhurst, I have found a niche in it that a lot of people haven’t. That niche has helped me grow to be an entrepreneur, but there isn’t a program offered that teaches entrepreneurialism. There isn’t anything that says, “You want to be a young entrepreneur, this is what you do.” So, for anyone reading this from Mercyhurst, it isn’t directed at you.
Instigatorblog writes this:
The frustration among many companies is clear; university graduates are coming out with very little enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, and very little sense of what’s going on beyond their classroom walls. Blogging? Social media? Ruby on Rails?
Colleges give you all the tools necessary to go out and find a new job. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that a restructure in the way of thinking will cause that same student to venture down a very different path. That different path is the one less traveled which has the power to spawn off new businesses left and right.
Here is the solution offered by Instigatorblog which I very much agree with:
- Teach entrepreneurship
- Provide startup services
- Bring in guest lecturers
- Encourage experimentation with new technology
- Have more co-op programs
- Get teachers and student connected
- Have contests and cash prizes
I have to add one - restructure the thought process.
It isn’t enough for a young entrepreneur to have the tools necessary to succeed. They need to be able to see the interconnectedness of those tools, and know how to apply them to real world situations.
How can this epidemic be solved? To be honest, I really don’t know. I can tell you that it is a larger problem than I alone can fix - but I am going to try. For anyone reading, if you have thoughts - I would love to here. Maybe a few of you and I can start a non profit, or collaborate on some education material. This blog is a start, I know that. I plan of launching some material concerning this topic very soon.
To me, the fix is in the thought pattern. A person can have all the entrepreneurial tools they want, but if they don’t know how to use them, they will be another nobody working away in a cubicle…
