Volume 67, Issue 7

This is the first installment of a two-part article written by Sy Syms Assistant Professor of Management and Marketing Dr. Lawrence Bellman illuminating the value of pursuing an entrepreneurial education during one's undergraduate tenure.  Dr. Bellman is responsible for developing and teaching many of the entrepreneurship courses offered at Yeshiva and is the organizer and coordinator for the well-attended Doris and Dr. Ira Kukin Entrepreneurial Lecture Series held each spring.

Can’t Get a Job, Start a Business!
by Professor Lawrence Bellman

The state of the economy is the linchpin that often drives undergraduate business school offerings.  The cyclical nature of our economic environment often creates new business start-up opportunities that affect the thinking of the entire business community.  In the 1996-98 timeframe, investors risked early stage financing, and entrepreneurs tossed their hat in the ring to start new businesses.  This atmosphere encouraged business schools to develop and enhance entrepreneurial courses and programs with the goal of increasing enrollment of more undergraduate students who could choose entrepreneurship as an alternative to the traditional courses of instruction.  In these economically prosperous times, students are offered the choice of a high success probability, whether entering traditional employment sectors or starting their own venture. 

Indeed, the growth of entrepreneurial education has been phenomenal.  The surging interest of many business schools in entrepreneurial education has been to the delight of the pro-entrepreneurship public, government, and the media.  Today, more than 1,500 colleges and universities offer some form of entrepreneurship and small business training.

Entering the twenty first century, however, we are faced with a weakened economy that limits career opportunities, and offers a diminished success probability.  In our current economy, where “dot.coms” are failing and venture money has dried up, the economic doldrums we are currently experiencing has caused downsizing and widespread layoffs and has created a very narrow job market.  This has led to a drop in traditional on-campus recruiting, and this increased job uncertainty has made the traditional route into the marketplace less attractive for many students. 

To undergraduates majoring in the traditional disciplines, this poses a real dilemma.  How can they enhance their chances of securing a career job opportunity upon graduation if there are only a few intern positions and very little on-campus recruiting?  Should they examine the self-employment route, and, if so, should they take entrepreneurial and/or small business management courses to prepare for this endeavor? 

Barriers to an Effective Undergraduate Entrepreneurial Program

The effectiveness of Undergraduate Entrepreneurial Programs (UEPs) is challenged by outlining four major reasons why schools are failing to capitalize on developing and growing a predictable undergraduate enrollment in UEPs:

The first area of contention is the lack of a comprehensive support infrastructure for UEPs.  Most undergraduate business schools have established robust career programs for their traditional majors such as accounting, finance, and pre-law.  These programs include links to graduate degrees, formal internships, on-campus interviewing and recruiting, exchange programs, and alumni mentoring and assistance.  Even specialized business majors such as retailing, insurance, and real estate often have similar incentives. 

Contrast this with entrepreneurship and small business management courses that lack all the formal career preparation steps that the traditional majors offer.  While in college, few future entrepreneurs decide that they will pursue entrepreneurship as their major life goal.  Since career aspirations likely involve forming a new venture, there is obviously no established organization to offer recruiting support activities, nor do we expect venture capitalists to approach college students with money to invest. 

(2)        The second area of contention argues that entrepreneurial courses are conveniently nested into a traditional management degree-track program, despite experts that argue that entrepreneurship and management should be treated as very distinct disciplines.  The majority of American universities do not offer a stand-alone entrepreneurship program resulting in an associated baccalaureate degree.  The driving forces behind integration of entrepreneurship courses into a traditional management curriculum may stem from the convenience of administrating such a program.  There is a readily available supply of academically qualified management faculty who can teach entrepreneurship and small business management by incorporating traditional management, marketing, finance, and operations components into the course curriculum.  However, when it comes to recruiting experienced entrepreneurs and business world operatives with academic qualifications, the supply dwindles.         

It can also be argued that it is more convenient to utilize well-established department organizations such as management that have years of experience in handling tenure-track and other faculty development issues, as well as curriculum, budgets, and facilities planning.  Educational publishers offer a vast array of educational resources to support their traditional textbook and course support material.  It is also difficult to measure the results of a UEP in terms of employment and career success.  School career placement offices can readily track graduating students placed into traditional disciplines (i.e., Accounting and Management), but how do they track an entrepreneurial career?

The implications of the lack of a separate undergraduate entrepreneurship degree program, or at least its offering as an “area of emphasis” within another business related degree program (e.g., General Management) is another formidable barrier to enhancing UEPs.  If students do not believe that the inclusion of entrepreneurial courses on their resume will enhance their career opportunities, they will not enroll in such courses and business schools will continue to focus their efforts on traditional majors such as accounting, no matter what the employment prospects are.  On the other hand, if students of the creative arts can take portfolios of their creations with them, why shouldn’t entrepreneurship students take with them portfolios of their business creation efforts, including business plans, and case histories with financial statements of ventures undertaken during their academic studies?

There are pros and cons to either offering a UEP as a degree program or as an “area of emphasis.”  Students may experience difficulty in securing traditional employment especially if the UEP is their degree program and they encounter difficulty in developing an entrepreneurial venture upon graduation.  On the other hand, the “area of emphasis” approach, while preparing the student for an entrepreneurial career, may make it easier for them to secure alternative temporary or permanent employment with more traditional employers. 

(4)        A fourth area of concern is the potential failure on the part of the university to recognize the financial upside associated with offering an attractive UEP.  Surveys have indicated that almost fifty percent of colleges offering entrepreneurial courses reported that their entrepreneurship courses have been responsible for generating additional funds for the college or faculty.  The majority of traditional school endowments today originate from successful executives and alumni.  An aggressive school business development office will target these individuals and their organizations by devising programs such as endowed chairs, school sponsorship events, and scholarship and achievement awards.  However, there are many potential contributors who founded their own organizations and are very much interested in encouraging entrepreneurial initiatives by graduating collegiates.  Failure to attract successful entrepreneurs with a tailored entrepreneurial program may cost the institution millions of dollars of lost financial opportunity.

Schools who have pursued these individuals have secured substantial funds for establishment of entrepreneurial institutes; work-study programs, course and seminar development, and business plan competitions.  Our own Rennert Entrepreneurship Institute at Yeshiva, as well as the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC, the Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, the Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at Farleigh Dickinson University, and the Institute for Entrepreneurial Education at LSU are examples of such initiatives. 

Business schools have a responsibility to instill in their students the feeling that they must be more responsible for their own destiny.  For many students this means starting their own company.  Translating this need into the entrepreneurial classroom means that educators must emphasize learning by doing, experience-based learning, the making of judgments under pressure, and the use of practitioners.¨

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