Entrepreneurship and Innovation Not Part of Traditional School Curriculum

Entrepreneurship is about learning to look for opportunities that exist all around us and think of new ways to take advantage of them. We haven’t really shared much about entrepreneurship and innovation with our general student populations since before the turn of the century (19th-20th). The industrialists at that time wanted as much production as possible from workers that would work hard at repetitive tasks without asking questions or suggesting new ways of doing things. In conjunction with the top educational institutions of the day (Harvard along with others), an educational system was developed that sought to turn students into good production workers, not entrepreneurial thinkers.

We still, pretty much teach our youth this way. We divided them into classes with those of the same age and teach them all the same things. If everyone can’t keep up, we slow everyone down and even water down the curriculum to make things fair. In spite of some very dedicated teachers along the way, the rank and file student hasn’t much of a chance to learn to think entrepreneurially, seeking to seize opportunities and solve problems in new ways.

Although some schools are starting to come around and realize that everyone can benefit from some form of basic entrepreneurial education—about looking for market opportunities and challenges and finding appropriate solutions in new and better ways—we have a long way to go.
The main point here is that all students need to be exposed to the concepts of entrepreneurship, not just the ones that know they are “different”. The concepts need to be presented at all grade levels, starting with middle school, if not elementary school.

Universities:
Even in the traditional disciplines; accounting, engineering, architecture, dentistry, law, medicine, veterinary medicine and the like, I never hear any recent graduates saying they received any kind of entrepreneurship training to enable them to set up and run their own businesses or practices. Yet, when I speak to high school students, 75% - 85% of those with interest in these same disciplines say they want to do their own thing, as opposed to working for someone else.

If the universities addressed this, they would likely suggest that students enroll in the traditional "business" courses. In fact, the traditional business courses, which prepare students to go to work for a big company, are not what are needed at all. What are needed are 12 – 15 credit hours of entrepreneurial curriculum (in addition to the curriculum they need for their discipline) that includes coursework in four areas;

1. Innovation; finding a market niche for their services and business planning to know how to successfully run the business
2. Accounting and record keeping for small business
3. Team building for a winning team; a workplace which includes a culture of character
4. Marketing for small business where the company web site is the hub of the marketing plan with all other marketing efforts, including social media, generating traffic to the web site

By not providing entrepreneurial training to accompany the degree, we are setting these young people up to fail when they launch their own practices. They also have no realization that opportunity exists everywhere, not just in the big cities.

 

Community Colleges:
The help that is needed for local small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs is much, much different than the plethora of traditional "business" courses in the community college catalogs for "business" transfer students. Community colleges in rural America need to develop coursework, geared specifically toward small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs in rural America. Offering the same "business" courses we offer transfer students toward "business" degrees is not very helpful at all.

As a side note, I've been given a great opportunity to be more responsive to the needs of the marketplace in the development of the Successful Entrepreneur program at Independence Community College. I'm not saddled with stodgy, traditional academicians that are resistant to change, but rather a Dean of Instruction who understands and supports the need to offer something different. We don’t have this totally figured out yet, but we continue to move in a direction that will be helpful to those traditional and non-traditional students that really want to be successful small business owners in rural America.

High Schools
For the past 50 – 60 years, we’ve told our high school students to go get a college degree and get a job. This has implied to them that the jobs are “out there” somewhere other than where they grew up. Today, many high schools have entrepreneurial programs, but they tend to be only for the students that know they are “different”. The truth is that all students need to be entrepreneurial, whether they think they want to work for someone else or work for themselves. Entrepreneurship teaches us how to recognize that there are opportunities everywhere. We need to expose all high school students to entrepreneurship, not just the ones that know they are “different”.

Middle Schools
My experience with middle school-aged kids is that they haven’t had the entrepreneurial spirit beaten out of them by the constant mantra “go to college, get a job, and work a career”. If you ask small groups of high school students to brainstorm entrepreneurial ideas, often you don’t get many unique ideas. Ask small groups of middle school kids to brainstorm entrepreneurial ideas and step back because something electric happens. So, for middle schoolers, we also need to nurture their innate sense of entrepreneurship and make them know that it’s ok to think differently.

As facilitator and business coach of the Successful Entrepreneur program at Independence Community College, I welcome the opportunity to speak with students at area schools in all age groups. We’ll expose them to the concepts of entrepreneurship and engage them in some fun activities to demonstrate the concepts.