More middle and high school students were being exposed to business and financial education in 2012 than they were a year before, but students’ interest in entrepreneurship has remained flat, a survey shows.
Fifty-nine percent of students in grades 5-12 responding to a national poll last year said their schools offered classes on how to launch and run a business, an increase from 50 percent in 2011, according to results released by the Gallup Organization and Operation HOPE, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group.
At the same time, students’ interest in starting a business and generating innovations remained fairly stagnant. Forty-three percent of the 1,217 students polled said they aspired to start their own businesses, a dip from 45 percent a year before. The portion of students who said they would “invent something that changes the world” stayed the same, at 42 percent.