Decades of research have shown that students are very interested in being their own bosses. In the ’90s, for example, a Kauffman Foundation study found that two-thirds of high school students wanted to become entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the same study found that more than 80% felt they had not learned anything about entrepreneurship in school. In 2011, the National Chamber Foundation and Junior Achievement got essentially the same responses from high school students in a nationwide study.
I’ve been trying to rectify this situation since the 1980s, when I set out to teach students that it was possible for them to be self-reliant and to start a business. We thought this would be a fairly easy goal, especially with the support of a policy from the new U.S. Department of Education stipulating that all career and technical programs should teach entrepreneurship.
