College Entrepreneurship Is on the Rise [Infographic]

Desk jobs are fading. Entrepreneurship is #winning.

At colleges around the country, three quarters of students demand a curriculum to help nurture their budding entrepreneurial spirit. Students don’t want to find just any old job when they graduate: 15% of college graduates start their own businesses directly out of college, over 3 times as many as 20 years ago.

So does this signify a smarter, hungrier breed of diploma-wielding twenty-somethings on the rise?

Unfortunately, we feel the shift has less to do with proactive career building, and more with students bracing themselves against an unforgiving job market. Almost 15% of recent 20-something graduates are unemployed or underemployed, nearly double the national jobless rate, which hovers around 8%. Because recent grads face an uphill battle against candidates with more impressive qualifications, it’s much more likely that students are anticipating the brutal employment market and preemptively exploring other options.

Nevertheless, there are some positive trends represented in this infographic by Intuit, which outlines how universities are attempting to establish entrepreneurial curriculum to satisfy student demands. Nearly 90% of students believe entrepreneurship education is important, good enough to make it one of the 5 most desired programs by new MBAs.

College entrepreneurship by the numbers: