Chapter 6: Aspiring Entrepreneurs Should Not Major in Entrepreneurship

There seems to be some cognitive dissonance between the rapid growth of entrepreneurship education programs in higher education and the insignificant, if not negative, correlation to new venture creation, especially among the college-aged and recent graduate demographic (Fairlie, Reedy, Morelix, & Russell, 2016; National Chamber Foundation, 2012). Is a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship worth it? No, it is argued here that a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship is not worth it for a student whose goal is to be an entrepreneur by founding his or her own venture for two main reasons. First, the most important part of an entrepreneur is the set of the dispositional traits that enable them to acquire and operationalize any skill or knowledge quickly, and these cannot be learned through instruction in any degree program. Second, a major in entrepreneurship necessarily means concentrating the majority of study on the diverse, practically infinite, set of possible skills and knowledge needed, at the expense of a deep focus on an area of specialized knowledge from which high quality opportunities can be discovered. Almost any other bachelor’s degree program offers more in terms of opportunity discovery. Given these points, almost any other bachelor’s degree is worth more to a student whose goal is to found a new venture, as they ultimately allow for the discovery of higher quality opportunities for venture creation.