At a time when fewer young people are starting their own
businesses, some prominent businesspeople and educators are looking for ways to
teach students to be more entrepreneurial. The latest initiatives often play down
traditional tasks like creating a business plan in favor of preparing
participants for broader challenges, such as how to get feedback from customers
and knowing when to adapt products or business models.
Last week, a panel of business executives and academics
co-chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case and former Hewlett-Packard Chairman
Carly Fiorina called for the creation of a national entrepreneurship
competition in which teams of elementary-, middle- and high-school students
would propose and pitch to judges their ideas for new ventures.
The proportion of young adults owning a business has fallen
to the lowest level in at least 24 years. Roughly 3.6% of households headed by
an adult younger than 30 owned stakes in private companies in 2013, according
to a Wall Street Journal analysis of recently released Federal Reserve data.
That is down from 10.6% in 1989, and it is down from 6.1% in 2010.
Economists point to young graduates’ poorer financial
situations after the recession as well as their difficulties gaining work
experience in the recent job market, among other factors. Some believe that
high schools and other institutions can do a better job preparing students for
the challenges of starting and running their own businesses.
The traditional American education has emphasized preparing
kids to execute shift work, and it doesn’t tend to give students enough
opportunity to tinker and compete in a fun, competitive landscape. Many
traditional programs, particularly at the high-school level, cling to the
notion that startups are smaller versions of existing companies. But startup
founders confront multiple unknowns, such as whether a new product or service
even fits a customer need.
At the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a 26-year-old
New York City nonprofit created to reduce the school-dropout rate, students
take on the role of restaurant owner and suggest changes to make their
businesses more competitive instead of simply listing the advantages of one
restaurant over another.
In the past, Junior Achievement USA, created in 1919,
focused on helping students develop skills such as sales and accounting that
would enable them to run their own businesses. It didn’t prioritize determining
whether there was an actual consumer need the business could fill. The Colorado
Springs, Colo., program was meant to prepare young adults for business careers
as the economy shifted away from agriculture.
Enrollment in the group’s flagship program fell 43% to
12,644 students in 2013-2014, down from a peak of 22,106 students seven years
earlier. Last summer, it put its entrepreneurship program online, making it
easier for students to raise money on the Web and manage e-commerce
transactions, among other things. This semester, Junior Achievement officials
have begun letting students turn their businesses into actual companies after
the 13-session program ends instead of requiring them to liquidate the
startups. Enrollment is expected to reach some 17,000 in the current school
year, a spokeswoman says.
In the Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kan.,
about 60 high-school juniors and seniors have spent three periods a day
identifying a business problem and developing a plan to solve it. They have
created a straw that filters water to make it potable, a dryer sheet infused
with insect repellant and a chair to calm autistic students, among other
ventures.
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