Picture a fresh individual — let's call her Linda — beginning college in 2007. Surveying the reducing financial system, she congratulates herself on her good birthday. She won't scholar until at least spring of 2011. By then, everything will be fine! Whoops.
As she languishes in underemployment, Linda gets an idea: If she can't get a job, she will develop a job. A recent Kauffman Foundation-funded study found more than 50 % of millennials would like to begin a little business — anything from developing iPhone applications to artwork houses.
Except that establishing a little business is a risk, and like the average college student these days, Linda has close to $30,000 in loans. They are now coming due. So she places her business dreams aside to bartend by night and hawk lattes by day, mostly for the income. It's clear for Linda, but too bad for society as a whole. Because there's a simple way to help youth become entrepreneurs despite their loans, if we recognize that beginning a little business is a community support — and incentive it as such.
Helping loan-strapped students
