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Tertiary education and startups - Part 3 of 3

by Anastasios Vasileiadis

To find a job as a graduate is a very import issue for every economy while entrepreneurship is seen as a key force for successful economic growth in the next decade.

Particularly, entrepreneurship courses should be provided in all departments of universities, but nowadays, qualified graduates unfortunately can not use the knowledge that they gain in university into their enterprises. However, the results of this study, support that university graduates’ start up their own businesses and this can be explained by the high percentage of entrepreneurship among Greeks related to the average of European ones (GEM, 2005). Furthermore, Greek graduates of higher education institutes set up their own businesses without following career as employed.

As it seems from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2005) and from our research, graduates startup a business based on family resources or on their own funding and they don’t use banking loans or community funding. Moreover, with regard to the affinity of object of study of the entrepreneurial activity, it appears that the answers of graduates are not homogeneous, while they are differentiated, depending on the faculty of graduation. But when the question comes to the usefulness of studies to their enterprise, the answer is negative. Concerning the last research question, the graduate entrepreneur is satisfied with the progress of his/her enterprise and the positive attitude is in pace with the high expectations of young entrepreneurs worldwide (GEM, 2005).

Consequently, the graduates of higher education worldwide are associated with high rates of self employment and this leads us to the conclusion that education could positively assist toward this direction. However, it is important to investigate further the same data worldwide since most researches taken place on a local level have limited value. In other words graduate entrepreneurship in tertiary education should be approached in a more holistic way (Keeble and Walker, 1994).

In any case all data shows that graduates although they start easier a new company, they need more guidance in their first business steps. And this is a task that we should take care off.