Summary
This research examines the impact that college education has on the development of potential entrepreneurs. The study uses the results of an entrepreneurship survey to test the following hypotheses: (1) College education improves an entrepreneur's ability to perform typical business functions; and (2) Entrepreneurs who do not have a college degree develop the ability to perform typical business functions from experience and a support network consisting of family, friends, financial advisors, and professional organizations.
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Extract
Entrepreneurs and Educational Choice: Is a College-Educated Entrepreneur a More Capable Entrepreneur?
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, business education has received an increasing amount of criticism from inside and outside of academia. Many authors have contributed to this debate. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) write that while business schools have enjoyed commercial success, "there are substantial questions about the relevance of their educational product and doubts about their effects on the careers of their graduates." They argue that the prevalent educational model is overly analytical and lacks sufficient emphasis on integration, leadership, and interpersonal skills. Lataif et al (1992) believes that "schools of management must change." The functional orientation toward management where one attempts to optimize the parts rather than the whole is "badly flawed " Lataif et al. (1992) questions whether the attempt by business schools to create managers from non-managers is misguided. He suggests that a student who is serious about becoming a manager Should go to work first and earn the position through performance. Gibb (2002) argues that business schools' reliance on case-based instruction and "a relatively limited range of mainstream teaching approaches" prepares students for careers in corporations at the expense of small business and entrepreneurship.A natural product of this debate is the desire to empirically test educational efficacy A central question is whether the college graduate has improved skills when compared to individuals in similar professions who do not have the same level of education Can the college graduate accomplish tasks with less difficulty than their less-formally-educated counterpart? The following study examines a sample of successful entrepreneurs/small business managers who have completed widely varying levels of education-none of whom state th...See the full content of this document
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