Baccalaureate Education and the Employment Decision: Self-Employment and the Class of 1993

摘要

In the small business research community, we often ask about the decision to become an entrepreneur. Why do certain people become self-employed and others choose to work for someone else. This paper delves into the relation of collegiate education to the employment decision. We are able to identify specific characteristics of the individuals who are self-employed versus those who opt to work for a for-profit business, a not-for-profit entity, or the government (including the military). Specifically, this research utilizes the U.S. Department of Educations Baccalaureate & Beyond (B&B) data series, which tracks college and university graduates in the class of 1993. This longitudinal survey asks a number of questions to a nationally representative sample of college and university students who were seniors during the 1992-1993 academic year. The same students answer follow-up questions periodically. In the case of the B&B data, there is information from subsequent questionnaires in 1994, 1997, and 2003. Much of the analysis in this paper focuses on employment in 2003, i.e., ten years after graduation.