A group of Gen Z entrepreneurship college students dreaming of their startups.
In the 70’s and 80’s, our parents told us to go to college as that would get us a good job. If we worked hard for 30 years then we should be able to comfortably retire on a pension. Well, as parents today, what did we tell our children, Millennials and Gen Z over the past 20 years? Pretty much the same thing. Problem is that the world is different today. People don’t work at jobs for 30 years anymore. Pensions have all but disappeared. Graduating from college doesn’t guarantee a job, let alone a satisfying career. Gen Z and Millennials have entrepreneurial ambitions and want more from life. Where did it all go wrong?
If you look at the college education structure, for entrepreneurship and most other majors, it really has not changed in 50 years or more. Specifically, for potential entrepreneurs, the education system has failed for years including people like Steve Jobs, and he is far from the only one. The founders of Microsoft, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Whole Foods, Uber, Oracle, and Dell are all college drop-outs. And even if you look at the top entrepreneurship programs in the USA, you can see they are not accomplishing their goal of creating more startups.
PitchBook's annual university rankings from October, 2022 compares schools by tallying up the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have founded venture capital-backed companies. The undergraduate and graduate rankings are powered by PitchBook data and are based on an analysis of more than 144,000 VC-backed founders. Babson, a top five ranked school in entrepreneurship is 96th on the list. And they have been churning out entrepreneurship students for over 50 years. As a matter of fact, entrepreneurship programs and activities have been on the rise at quite a few colleges in the USA. Why are there not more college graduated entrepreneurs and subsequent startups? It’s simple. The education system in the USA is not set up to encourage creativity or failure.
It starts in elementary school, continues through high school and then sets students up for failure in college. All along the way, students are taught to not think out of the box, color between the lines, pass the test at almost all costs and move on as failure is not an option. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) gives statistics showing that, whereas in the 1940s only 20% of college students admitted to cheating, nowadays the percentage has increased to 75 - 98%.
The current model of higher education is stifling the creative soul of our students. Students aren’t taught or rewarded to think outside the box. They are taught how to pass tests. How does this system benefit entrepreneurship students with startup aspirations? It does not.
The United States, for most of its history, has been unique because of its innovative capacity, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. The college educational system fails to promote the kind of creativity, risk-taking, and problem-solving skills necessary for entrepreneurship. In a global economy, where competition is increasing exponentially, this lack of creativity and risk-taking is stifling innovative spirit. How has this affected today’s students?
Based on scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Kyung Hee Kim, Professor of Education at the College of William and Mary, found that children have become ‘less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle.’ This a study from ten years ago. Is it any wonder that Gen Z college students today suffer from the highest levels of mental anxiety seen in decades?
Entrepreneurs are known for disrupting the status quo. Colleges, as one of the most stagnant institutions in America, embody the status quo. It makes sense that entrepreneurs would resist it. Programs like The Thiel Fellowship play off this notion, offering money to student entrepreneurs if they drop out of college to build their ideas. What’s the alternative?
Here are three things we can do to improve the college education system especially for students with entrepreneurial ambitions.
Focus on creativity. University curriculum in every major needs to embrace creativity in their curriculum. Reward thinking out of the box and stop the multiple-choice memorization testing. Introduce more readings and project-based work that encourages innovative thinking and multiple ways to get to a solution. Let students take more exploratory courses as freshmen.
Have failure become learning. Imagine a university system where… mistakes are allowed and encouraged. Teachers reward students who ask questions. Students receive feedback on every assignment and are graded on their ability to improve from the feedback, rather than the quality of the original assignment. As Carol Dweck, the Stanford professor and researcher, who has been heavily published with respect to growth mindset, encourage students to grow with ‘not yet’ feedback and grading versus a failing grade.
Let students craft their major. Why do we force students in a major to take the same courses as everyone else? Universities have an incredible variety of classes, so let the students decide which ones to take, beyond a small core, that fuels their interests and curiosity. Someone interested in disrupting bio-technology would need to understand the basics of biology, computer science, business, and human-centered design. There are no set courses that make you an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs wanted to learn about design, computer science, business, and literature. When he found he couldn’t, he dropped out and opted to learn everything on his own. Today’s students interested in innovation and entrepreneurship want to learn about diverse topics. Let’s innovate the university education system so current and future students who want to be entrepreneurs learn to embrace creativity and failure and build amazing next generation startups.
