Following up on the last post, another\u00a0foundation of your entrepreneurial ecosystem is education. Education of a business owner is\u00a0linked to higher chances of business continuation and higher levels of employment growth. Even average education of the local population is linked with higher\u00a0chances of business continuation and higher levels of employment growth.<\/p>\n
Given the importance of education, reports from the USDA, like “Rural Education at a Glance, 2017 Edition,” are invaluable. These reports are particularly valuable for rural areas, because rural areas have historical struggled with lower education levels compared to metro areas. Specifically, compared with rural (nonmetro) areas, urban (metro) areas have historically had a higher share of adults with bachelor\u2019s, postgraduate, and professional degrees.<\/p>\n
While rural areas have improved in terms of the nominal levels of high school and bachelor’s degree completion, the relative increase has left them still further behind metro areas in terms of the percent of the population with a bachelor’s degree. In their new report, the USDA finds that between 2000 and 2015, the share of metro adults with at least a bachelor\u2019s degree grew from 26 to 33 percent, while in rural areas the share grew from 15 to 19 percent. On the positive side, the report points out that the share of rural adults with less than a high school diploma did improve significantly, dropping to 15 percent in 2015, close to the share for urban adults (13 percent), and that the share of adults with an associate\u2019s degree was also similar in rural and urban areas.<\/p>\n
See more at the USDA’s report at the link here: https:\/\/www.ers.usda.gov\/webdocs\/publications\/eib171\/eib-171.pdf?v=42830<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"