What is the percentage of business owners who don't have a degree?

Question

I was just wondering because I use to travel around many different cities selling insurance. I would actually target small business owners. A lot of them like to brag about how they got their own business without going to school. Does anyone know what percentage of business owners never got a degree?

Answer 1

In this day and age, a large number of Americans go to college. Figure about 50-75% of all business owners under the age of 50 have a degree. Whether or not it was relivant to their business is highly doubtful.

If you want hard figures, try the SBA (Small Business Administration). They might have such figures for applicants for small business loans.

Answer 2

Well it's just logical there, I mean if you have a degree you get it to do a cushy job for someone else, not yourself.

If you lack the degree, and you want a good job, you have to make the job, you can't just work for someone else. Often it seems entrepreneurs feel a need to make their own jobs.

That's why a lot are immigrants, some even have schooling from their foreign lands that aren't recognized where they are now(this is a problem here in Canada, in my city we had a cab driver who used to be a Judge in his native country), so they have to make their own fortune.

As I recall this has been a trend for a while, I read it in one of my business books. It used to be white people that were native to Canada that started up the most businesses, now it's mostly immigrants. Children of immigrants often don't seem to follow in the footsteps of their parents either, they lack the need it seems.

So it's logical that most do not have degrees in their given fields. I think most under probably 50 won't have degrees, whereas people over 50 may have worked for a long time and then branched out on their own as retirement approached.

Answer 3

At least 90% if we had a degree we would get a real job with a pay check and a retirement plan

Answer 4

A fairly large percentage. No knowledge of exact statistic but you could probably get that from a librarian or the BLS at BLS.gov