Young aspiring entrepreneurs wish to get on their entrepreneurial journey as early as possible. For the fast-moving ones, the question of whether they do need a college education before starting a business remains a big question unanswered.
This article discusses why you should still go to college even if you plan to start a business:
1. Those Without College Certifications Are Outliers
A handful of people like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates have hugely successful businesses without a college degree. These few typically started on the degree acquisition process without completing while a larger percentage of successful entrepreneurs underwent a complete college education.
Going through college reduces your risk of failing at business after equipping individuals with soft skills such as in-depth knowledge, strategic planning, and critical thinking abilities. Try to carry out online researches via platforms such as College Rank and then physically visit closely situated college to your location before making a final choice
2. Comprehensive Education Is Guaranteed
Education is an inalienable aspect of human life, making it important to undertake a highly structured process that requires a high level of dedication. You’ll learn a comprehensive educational curriculum with a pretty rigorous timetable to work with during this period.
As you work through your college coursework, you’ll learn more about your industry and its business aspect. The specialization is encouraged as you climb the heights of your curriculum to ensure that your focus is better tailored towards your future career.
Economics and accounting courses are some of the electives you should opt-in to ensure you get a better picture of the financial dynamics of business. It would entail many calculations but they would equip you with an understanding of the complex world of finance, including tax laws, trade regulation, and money distribution.
3. It’s An Active Networking Platform
Networking is very important to the development process of a business. Most Fortune 500 companies were cofounded by collegemates who developed a good friendship while at school. This gives credence to the fact that college will provide you with the opportunity to build and maintain an active professional network that can be useful for business opportunities and growth in the future. The categories of people you’ll meet while in school include professors, recruiters, and like-minded students.
Skipping college would also mean you would have no connection with an alumni association. Alumni associations allow you to leverage your connections with schools and institutions when conducting business with an individual from the same alum association. Liaising with your old institution during fairs and other business opportunities would be more probable through your affiliation with the institution.
4. It Provides Ample Time To Develop A Business Structure
College is a place to learn and a place to kickstart your business. Since you’ve always known you’ll end up doing business, there’s no reason to wait till you finish your degree before starting. You’ll be afforded enough time outside of your school curriculum and studies to put a working structure to your future business operations.
You can work on your business ideas with the help of your fellow students whom you’ve found capable and likeminded with you at school. This provides you with ready hands to fine-tune your raw business ideas and launch out within the school premises. Launching your business within the school premises helps you to enjoy the following:
- You get a holistic view of your business idea
- You can enjoy mentorship from seniors, academics, and alums
- You’ll enjoy committed, dedicated, and inexpensive labor from fellow students
- You have a ready market that will buy into your product as one of their own.
5. Development Of Soft Skills
Soft skills such as PowerPoint presentations, time management, and teamwork are part of the skills you’ll develop during your college education that’ll be useful in your future business operations. Although you can argue some of these skills can be learned outside the campus walls, you’ll enjoy a practical-based approach in learning these skills during a college career.
The tedious and tasking workload of the college campus enables you to develop multitasking abilities as you strive to succeed in a broad range of courses during your study. Other soft skills you’ll develop are business writing skills, improved self-esteem, and stress management.
6. Credibility
A college degree offers a reasonable level of credibility to your future business operations. The average client is likely to conduct business with a degree holder than with one who lacks a degree. Also, an investor will generally prefer to invest with a seasoned and educated startup founder than with one who is a college drop out. There will be a higher level of scrutiny required to justify an investment with the latter than the former due to their predisposition to be frivolous, amongst other things.
7. A Favorable Disposition To Lifelong Learning
Learning new things will never stop even in your business conduct, among other things. This is an attitude that’s adequately cultivated during higher education in the college with the implementation of learning completion and improvement metrics. Going through this process makes it important that you go through the learning process thoroughly and complete it. This will be a great disposition in your future entrepreneurial endeavors.
8. Readiness For The Business World
You can explore all your business options within the walls of a college campus. If you’re lucky enough to start your business while in school, you’ll learn very useful life lessons such as consistency, tenacity, and proactiveness.
Failure is sometimes inevitable in the business world, and your college experience may be the ideal experience for you on your entrepreneurial after college. The surges and downturns in the business world add up as valuable business lessons while in college.
Takeaway
As much as you wish to hop on the entrepreneurial wagon as early as possible, you must be ready to halt yourself in your steps to go through a college education first. A college education will increase your success chances in the business world enormously.
Through the course of your college study, you’ll undergo a comprehensive study curriculum and equip with soft skills you’ll otherwise have to pay for and get less value outside the walls of a college. Lastly, a dedication to lifelong learning is developed in you, a very useful approach for business success.
Interesting related article: “What is Networking?“