LANSING – The old ways of educating students to get them ready to be good worker bees in factories and offices is rapidly changing in Michigan, a new report shows. Some 82 percent of postsecondary institutions in the state are now offering courses to train the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The Michigan Entrepreneurship Education Benchmarking Report was issued by the Small Business Foundation of Michigan?s Michigan Entrepreneurship Education Network.
The report finds that:
Among Michigan?s 71 postsecondary institutions, 82 percent have some form of academic opportunity for students to learn about Entrepreneurship or Small Business. A formal academic program (i.e., major, minor, or certificate) is offered by 36 institutions (51 percent), while an additional 22 (31 percent) offer courses only.
Entrepreneurship Education programs are highly varied ? aimed at traditional students, returning students, and youth; credit and non-credit offerings; classroom-based, extra-curricular, and co-curricular.
Two-year colleges are in particular aiming to serve the current labor force, from re-training auto industry workers to assisting their students in vocational disciplines to pursue self-employment to helping small businesses expand.
A focus on youth is also growing, including postsecondary collaborations with elementary, middle, and high schools to foster an entrepreneurial mindset and encourage enrollment in postsecondary entrepreneurship programs.
While the reality of limited resources is a constraint, there appears to be a trend toward creative partnerships to leverage and maximize resources.
?While formal education in general is at least modestly correlated with entrepreneurial activity, the highest levels of entrepreneurship are achieved by individuals with formal Entrepreneurship coursework and skill development,? said Karen Bantel, Ph.D, MBA, executive director of MEEN and author of the report. ?Thus, entrepreneurship academic program development plays a crucial role in economic growth and transformation.?
The primary purpose of the 2007 Michigan Entrepreneurship Education Benchmarking Report is to offer a current and comprehensive picture of entrepreneurship education at the postsecondary level in Michigan, including educational institutional partnerships with organizations that enhance entrepreneurial learning. The intent is to provide a starting place for further conversations and planning to catalyze Michigan?s entrepreneurial economy by informing institutional, community, and state-level program development and policy discussions related to supporting entrepreneurship education.
The full report is available online at SBAM.Org
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