Public & Private High Schools

Youth entrepreneurship programs are proliferating in schools and communities across the country and on the Internet. A new generation of youth (defined as birth to 18) is seeking independence along with income as they choose to start businesses rather than work the variety of low wage jobs open to young people. An inquiry through one Internet search engine brought up 11,200 hits under the topic youth entrepreneurship, another search engine brought up over a million! Many of these programs are targeted for at-risk youth, or specific populations such as young women. Community-based groups offer many of the programs at the state or local level and a few of the sites are organizations or institutions doing research on the youth entrepreneurship phenomenon.

Youth Entrepreneurship programs take a wide variety of forms and are offered by schools, community groups, and private enterprises in local town, cities, states, nationwide and internationally. As the second half of the two-part series on Youth Entrepreneurship, this digest borrows from Dobson and Kauffman's (1998) framework as a means of organizing the numerous and sometimes confusing array of programs for youth entrepreneurs. Descriptions of programs and contact information are included as well.

Starting in the ninth grade a student can enroll in the MBEI’s Entrepreneurial Training Program. Just like the public ands private charter schools this is a secondary career choice. However, student that wish to receive post graduate students and advance degrees in entrepreneurship will be encouraged to go to affiliate colleges in the support network that offer specialized entrepreneurial training programs.

The Tri-State Partnership is the management organization for the  entrepreneurial training program.  It can provide classroom instruction, specialized curriculum for entrepreneurial studies, workshops and teacher training seminars. While high school courses in Technology Education-which include mechanics, agriculture, woodworking, business education, computer education, and others-are as much a part of American high schools as English and football. Recently, they have also begun to include entrepreneurial skills such as business plan development, financial skills, goal setting, and problem solving as part of their curriculum.