As a lifelong entrepreneur and former public school teacher, I read an article entitled, “Does School Choice Increase the Rate of Youth Entrepreneurship?” with great interest. It validated my gut sense that traditional schooling generates, at most, 4% entrepreneurs in the US.
The professors who published that article used US Census data to determine that a mere 2 to 4% of public school graduates start their own business within 12 years of graduating. No wonder we struggle with unemployment! We have a school system that produces a serious glut of graduates in “employee-mode”.
Personally, I find it horribly ironic and self-defeating that our society, which is based on a free-market economy, settles for an education system that produces 96 – 98% employees, instead of employers.
An education system more suited to a free market economy, in my opinion, ought to be generating a radically greater percentage of entrepreneurs. That way, unemployment would be negligible. Think of it this way… if 80% of our graduates were starting their own businesses, who would they all hire to help them as their businesses grew? The law of supply and demand tells us that employee wages would necessarily rise as the demand for employees did.
In summary, I believe that our free market economy would greatly benefit from having an educational system that generates more entrepreneurs than the mere 2 to 4% ours currently does.
Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not?