The job insecurity that has settled over the nation during the past few years has made the idea of self-employment more appealing to college students. And so a growing number of colleges and universities are offering courses and even degree programs in entrepreneurship to prepare young people for the challenges of working for themselves. Isle colleges add
entrepreneur programsUH offers graduate and
undergraduate classesStar-Bulletin staff and wire
"People realize that rather than get a job, I've got to make a job," said Erik Pages, policy director for the Washington, D.C.-based National Commission on Entrepreneurship.
In the 1980s, only a handful of business schools offered entrepreneurship programs, Pages said. At least 550 colleges now offer classes in entrepreneurship, with 49 offering it as a degree program, he said.
University of Hawaii does not offer a degree in entrepreneurship, but it can boast a growing curriculum program that began in the fall of 2000 and which is capped off each spring with an annual business plan competition.
Hawaii Pacific University offers a bachelor of science in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurial studies.
UH's $50,000 competition requires students to develop a new business or new business plan, with the most successful students advancing through several rounds of judging and coaching. Ultimately, the five finalists present their business plans to a panel of five judges, with the winner receiving $25,000. Second place is worth $15,000 while third place gets $10,000.
"The idea behind that is that it would become seed money to take the business plan to the next step and actually start a permanent ongoing growth business," said Jim Wills, associate dean at UH's College of Business and a professor of marketing.
Last year's winners, Len Higashi and Jill Hamasaki of Zoji Golf, formed a business plan for a system of high-quality children's golf clubs that grow with the child through interchangeable shafts.
"It was a combination of a good idea and a clever patent that had to do with the interchangeable shaft locking and unlocking easily," said Robert Robinson, executive director of UH's Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship and E-Business.
UH's entrepreneurship program, which offers about 12 courses divided between the undergraduate and graduate levels, got off the ground when the college received $1 million from donors Barry and Virginia Weinman and a similar amount from the state.
In March 2002, the program took on a physical presence when the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship and E-Business was opened on campus.
Students don't formally apply to the program because no degree is offered. But a proposal to offer an entrepreneurship degree is working its way through the administrative channels now.
Among the courses being offered now are entrepreneurial marketing, new venture management, and entreprenuership for science and technology, which focuses on medical school students. About 55 students are taking entrepreneurship courses at the MBA level, Robinson said.
"(Entrepreneurship) is a new initiative for the college," Wills said. "We focus not only on academic issues in which we create an academic program for students, but also on developing business ideas that might come out of the university."
The University of Dayton, in Ohio, began offering entrepreneurship as a major in 1999 and had 10 students. There are 83 students in the program this school year.
Star-Bulletin reporter Dave Segal and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
National Commission on Entrepreneurship
University of Hawaii
Hawaii Pacific University