Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2011. The expected bank mergers and branch closures, civil service cuts and Amancio Ortega’s place among Forbes’s 10 richest men reflect that time. Caja Granada has since disappeared through Spain’s savings bank mergers.
I recently attended a relative’s graduation at the University of Granada. It was the graduation ceremony for the future graduates in Business Administration and Management (ADE in Spanish). After two hours of speeches by students and lecturers, one part of the address caught my attention: “Here we have the future managers of Granada’s companies.”
That message does these young people no favours. In my view, anyone who studies Business Administration and Management, one of the degrees with the best prospects after the little-known “community manager” (a phantom profession), should be encouraged to think about starting their own business or company: “Here we have the future entrepreneurs of the province of Granada.”
It’s all down to the Spanish mindset: while the United States trains entrepreneurs, in Spain we teach our young graduates to work as employees for other companies. What’s more, most of these young people had their sights set on working in banking, and many of them now see that job market cut off, since banks aren’t expected to hire. Quite the opposite: more bank mergers are forecast, leading to more branch closures. On top of that, the push for online banking will cut jobs in the sector.
This is very bad news for our young people, because we’re also seeing cuts in civil service jobs, the other option most sought after by graduates.
You don’t need to go to university to start a business. They won’t teach you some of the commandments that lead to business success there. In fact, as we’ve discussed before, being an entrepreneur isn’t a university degree but a mindset. That said, if there is one degree that can provide important guidance for creating and running your own company, it’s Business Administration, so these young people shouldn’t be steered towards working for others.
Of course, this also serves as motivation for many other people who never had the chance to go to university. That won’t stop them from starting a company. We only have to look at today’s most fashionable companies and entrepreneurs, who have something in common: none of them finished their degree, and all of them employ university graduates.
Bill Gates didn’t finish his degree, and neither did Steve Jobs, who dropped out of university after six months. For Amancio Ortega, a basic school-leaving certificate was enough to build Spain’s biggest business empire and make the Forbes list of the 10 richest men.
In the province of Granada specifically, and I imagine it reflects the rest of Spain’s provinces, the biggest companies are run by people who didn’t go to university, while they have plenty of CVs from Business Administration graduates waiting to join their ranks. Clearly this mindset isn’t the graduates’ fault, since it’s what the universities themselves instil in them, even if with the best of intentions. These young people rule out starting their own business; their only dream and way out is to work at Santander, Caja Granada or Puleva.
We recently looked at some entrepreneurs who, tired of looking for jobs that required qualifications they didn’t have, had no choice but to start their own company. A graduate, by contrast, spends their first job “pounding the pavement” looking for a company to hire them: they have the training, they’re keen and they’re ready to enter the job lottery. We’d like to remind them that they also have the option of becoming entrepreneurs, which is what Spain needs, given that today’s companies have more than enough “labour”.
Further reading
- The 10 commandments of Chinese entrepreneurs
- The advantages of starting a business in a time of crisis
Featured image: Southeastern Seminary, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
