Educated and jobless? Go back to entrepreneurial school

Hopeton Morrison, GUEST Writer

The word is out that there are hundreds of university and teachers college graduates desperately in need of employment. Some have been unemployed for over a year.

Although others have dealt with the frustration by pursuing second and third degrees or opting into the professional ranks such as law or accounting where resources permitted, many seem to be giving up.

If you represent one of these unemployed graduates, you really should consider an entrepreneurial option to start your career. Indeed, our four most prominent universities, University of the West Indies (UWI), University of Technology (UTech), Northern Caribbean University (NCU), and University College of the Caribbean (UCC), now deliver courses in entrepreneurship towards the certificate level, and towards undergraduate and graduate degrees.

It is not insignificant that many successful companies were conceived and/or developed by college students out of the ferment of classroom discussions, seminars and case studies. Perhaps the most celebrated of these is now FedEx, the world's first overnight express delivery corporation, founded by Frederick Smith.

Smith's idea grew out of an economics paper that he submitted at Yale in which he outlined the framework of an overnight delivery service.

Hewlett Packard Inc, another success story, was conceived and developed by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, graduates in electrical engineering from Stanford University. It was a past professor from Stanford who mentored these two young men into starting up this company in a garage in Palo Alto, California, during the Great Depression in 1935.

Interestingly, all four local universities are now placing strong emphasis on entrepreneurship education. UTech offers a BSc in entrepreneurship that sets out to prepare students to run their own businesses via a mix of electives, practicums and symposiums. Among the topics covered are entrepreneurial behaviour, new venture marketing, the in-cubatory process, family businesses, microfinancing and franchising.

Among the other three, UWI Mona offers a BSc in management studies with a major in entrepreneurship. In addition, UWI's Open Campus offers a six-week programme in small-business management each semester, including summers, at its Camp Road campus.

The NCU offers an MBA in entrepreneurship marketing. And UCC has been advertising its entrepreneurship certificate for managers, professional and business owners.

It is actually a good idea to pursue entrepreneurship education especially in these difficult times. Present research into entrepreneurship among university graduates point to the fact that entrepreneurship education does make a difference in students' subsequent career paths.

Developing entrepreneurs

A perennial argument is whether successful entrepreneurs are born that way, influenced by entrepreneurial parents, forced into entrepreneurship because of certain life-altering events such as redundancy, divorce, or death of the major family provider or are products of entrepreneurial education.

The short answer is that all of the above play different parts in developing successful entrepreneurs. But research has pointed to entrepreneurship education being a key determinant in the creation of successful entrepreneurs.

For example, personality theory has pointed to two traits that lead to success in entrepreneurship. These are creativity, and autonomy/independence. These traits emerge early in a person's career and, where they exist, create a predisposition in the learner for positive changes brought about by entrepreneurship education.

Indeed, entrepreneurship education offers access to positive entrepreneurial role models, ultimately resulting in a more favourable view of entrepreneurship as a career option.

It is also of interest that many if not most young college students would prefer to go the route of self- employment rather than paid employment. In fact, one exhaustive study by Lars Kolvereid and Oystein Moen published in the Journal of European Industrial Training in 1997 found that graduates who majored in entrepreneurship were generally not only more inclined to start their own business, but also that entrepreneurial intention and behaviour could be altered through entrepreneurship education.
So what does this all mean to you if you are an unemployed graduate? We would suggest that perhaps the best way out of your employment problems might be to seek out some form of entrepreneurship education. Further, if you are currently enrolled in university full time or part time, and are not assured of paid employment on graduation, we would strongly recommend that you invest a little more of your time and limited funds in doing a few courses in entrepreneurship. Seek out the dean's office in your institution to find out which are the most popular and useful courses to pursue.

Last, but by no means least, in the present Jamaican and world economic environment, we would also recommend that if you are heading to university soon, consider a degree, or a minor, in entrepreneurship. At the very least, you will be providing yourself with a career lifeline.

Hopeton Morrison is general manager of St Thomas Co-operative Credit Union Limited.Send questions to: hmorrison@stccu.com