Erika Salinas is a young woman with a yen for business.

This B.S. entrepreneurship senior student of Mirriam College in Quezon City has created her own line of accessories that she sells to employees and fellow students in her school.

From a small capital of P3, 000, Salinas purchased tools and materials for making mod accessories. She bought small pliers, beads and plastic threads – transforming them to pretty ID laces, necklaces, bookmarks, and rosaries.

It wasn’t hard selling her stuff, Salinas says, adding that she simply began wearing school to school her best designs. Her classmates noticed, and in no time, orders came pouring in.

“I recovered my investment after one week,” she enthuses. These days, Salinas earns P3,000 a week for a maximum order of ten accessories.

The still-in-school young entrepreneur bares that she intends to save her earnings and plans to put up her own boutique somewhere in Katipunan – an area brimming with fashion-conscious students and young professionals, to cater to a bigger market.

Salinas recently represented her school as panellist in a forum on entrepreneurship for students. Mirriam College was one of four participating schools that comprised the Consortium of Women Colleges. Other schools include Assumption College, St. Scholastica’s College, and College of the Holy Spirit.

The forum presented interesting results of a 2006 survey conducted under the Women Entrepreneurs program of Let’s Go Foundation and GE Money Bank, a consumer financial services unit of General Electric Company.

GE Money Bank is one of the leading providers of credit services to consumers and retailers. It also provides home equity loans, credit insurance and auto dealerships in 55 countries around the world.

Knowledge Gap

Says Let’s Go Foundation head and Asian Institute of Management professor Jay Bernardo: “The survey showed that majority of the students (88%) intend to start their own business in the future. However, limited knowledge, understanding and experience posed serious obstacles to becoming an entrepreneur.

More than seven out of every 10 students surveyed admitted they had no formal exposure to business management or entrepreneurship courses.

“Their understanding for business seems to be limited only to selling, which they experienced when they were growing up. Ninety percent of the respondents answered that they would like to learn more about entrepreneurship and how to start their own businesses,” Bernardo adds.

The study clearly established there is a considerable gap between the desire to put up a business and the level of knowledge and skills possessed by the students to actualize this desire. This gap seems to translate to an unwillingness to be self-employed right after college.

About 64% of the students prefer to be employed in a private corporation or a non-profit organization after they graduate, while only 31.75% though of owning a business or being self-employed.

These results likewise indicate the continued focus of society towards pursuing, rather than generating, employment after college, experts say.

The survey further revealed that students are mostly influenced by their families to start a business; teachers only garnered a response of five, which shows that schools have always followed the path of developing employees rather than entrepreneurs.

Classroom vs. IT

When asked about the different models of learning, only 28% of the respondents said they would like to learn through instruction (lectures and case studies) while 50% said they would like to learn through the use of technology (online courses and computer games).

The responses, say panellists at the forum, indicate the degree of interest and acceptance of the new information technology by students.

Understanding business would be greatly enhanced by the integration of IT instruction in entrepreneurial courses, they explained.

The survey aimed to identify the interests and needs of the students, as well as gain insights that can enhance the Women Entrepreneurs (WE) program.

The WE program is designed to encourage school activities that expose students to required entrepreneurship knowledge, skills and experience that will allow them to pursue and develop their interests in starting a business.

A total of 126 students were surveyed for the study. Two-thirds of the total sample comprised of students taking up business courses and the rest were made up of students taking up non-business courses.

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