The Tennessean reports on the creation of a new business major in entrepreneurship at Belmont University. Today’s story also explores why many college students wish to start their own businesses after graduation.
Belmont University student Kevin Alexandroni left a career as a chef in a restaurant chain to open his own kosher catering business. Kyle Kuttler hopes to open his own graphic design business.
They are part of a small but growing number of student entrepreneurs at Belmont and other universities who are rejecting the idea of working for corporate America. Instead, they are choosing self-employment.
”I want to be in control of my financial status and not worry about a paycheck,” Kuttler said. ”I don’t want to live off two weeks’ vacation every year.”
Next fall, business students at Belmont will be able to study entrepreneurship as a major course of study, said Jeff Cornwall, director of the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship. He holds the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship and also authors a Web log on entrepreneurship called The Entrepreneurial Mind.
”Hundreds of universities have added entrepreneurship majors,” said Cornwall, who has experience as an entrepreneur. He taught that subject at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., area after starting up and selling his own behavioral health business in the late 1980s.
The story also notes that programs such as Belmont’s new major in entrepreneurship can boost the success rate for new businesses: “The failure rate for new businesses is 70% to 80%. But when the owners have gone through a university program, the success rate is 80%.”
UPDATE: Coverage also on the Nashville Business Journal website.
