Hi there everyone!
Scouting the web for some interesting material on the relatively low degree of entrepreneurship among Spaniards, I came across this one, by American professor Jennifer Riggins. I think it makes a pretty compelling read and will hopefully lead to some interesting debates and discussions.
I have chosen a couple of the- in my view- most thought-provoking bits. Apparently, in the writer's opinion (and many of the experts mentioned, who seem to second her views), the Spanish in general, and the youths, in particular, may not be the most ambitious people ever! We have rather low aspirations, or so it seems! An unfair cliché or the sad truth? You decide! (after reading the article!)
Without further ado, here we go! (and remember, these are HER words, not mine!)
Generation Y in Spain isn't asking why, they're just floundering about. Sixty percent of the country's over-educated lost generation of university and master's graduates aged 30 and under aren't getting hired. With around 20 percent unemployment nationwide, these young adults are left to fight over unpaid internships and jobs beneath their experience levels, just to get something to put on their resume. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD,) 44 percent of the Spanish aged 25 to 29 that actually have jobs are working in ones that require lesser skills than they have. So with no families, no mortgages and little else to lose, why aren't more of them creating jobs for themselves?
Many say the Spanish are just lazy, but that's not it. There's something else, intangible, that's developed in the culture and history. The children of Spain aren't raised to follow their dreams. School has become, for the most part, just a place for passing exams, never for debate, discussion or critical thinking. Your curro, or job, is to endure from nine to nine, pushing buttons until the next break. A history of civil war and a 39-year dictatorship, followed by a construction boom and crash, to now, where it's taken for granted that politicians will be corrupt, has led to a nation that's devoutly proud of being Spanish, but that can't define what that even means.
Beyond the absurdly challenging bureaucracy and the fact that banks are hardly offering loans at all anymore, there's something stagnant about the government-controlled education system and the culture, in general, that is keeping the nation's most book-learned generation in history from reaching its potential. SmartPlanet sets out to re-open the discussion of why technically adept young adults are not looking to start their own businesses and why this resistance to altering the status quo has led Spain to be predicted as one of the slowest kids in the PIIGS (referring to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, those most hit by Eurozone crisis,) who will take the longest to climb out of its own economic free fall.
"Upon graduation, 70 percent of Spanish people want to work in large companies, while 70 percent of American graduates want to be their own bosses," writes Juan Angel Hernandez, in a recent op-ed for a Spanish financial magazine, advocating on behalf of start-ups, as a solution to the crisis. He writes about how the goals of recent grads are either to work for the government or one of Spain's top ten companies.
So instead of between 50 and 80 percent of recent grads studying for absurdly competitive government jobs, why aren't they creating their own opportunities? Research has concluded that start-up values can best be instilled at a young age and the education system is not up to the task. It states that: "Entrepreneurship can be learnt at school and should be actively promoted so that young Spaniards can develop skills such as independence, self-confidence and decision-making in situations of risk." The researchers came to the conclusion that, "Young Spanish people don't feel they have been taught how to be entrepreneurs, which is why teachers need to have the relevant tools and materials to teach business acumen and initiative, whilst also fostering their students' interaction with local entrepreneurs."
Blaming the education system -- which only maybe changes when a new political party takes power every eight years -- isn't a new theme. This isn't a nation where kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up. "In high school and university, no one has ever asked them what their motivation is", says Eva Snijders "People here concentrate on whether it's difficult to build a business and why it takes time and money."
Rosaura Alastruey hosts motivational workshops for both the employed and unemployed. She says, "Un emprendedor es un bicho raro," which translates to "an entrepreneur is a rare bug," or a freak or oddball. In Spain, "Jobs are to subsist," she told SP recently. There's no need to like what you do, you just need to have a job.
It seems that you only look to start a company when it's the last thing left to try. Alastruey says, "I have students: 'After a year or two years unemployed, now I want to open a business.' It's the last option."
Folks in their twenties and thirties make up the first generation after the dictatorship of General Franco. "This is the generation where the parents didn't have anything, so their kids have everything, not learning that everything has a cost." The sons and daughters of the post-Franco world aren't living to make ends meet, but are simply waiting for their ideal job or are opositando, the truly Spanish phenomenon of studying for the highly competitive civil service exams. Many, on their parents' dime, study nine hours a day, six days a week for these exams, for one to five years at a time, while some of these jobs-for-life can see 1,000 applicants for only three spots.
As one entrepreneur at a networking event recently said, "You're 23 years old with your whole life ahead of you and all you can dream of is to be a public servant?
It makes one think, innit?
There's a lot of truth in the materials you've shared. I think most of them rather hit the nail on the head. I'm not Spanish, and I'm no expert in Spanish history and culture either. But the arguments against the uninspiring educational system and the legacy of nearly four decades of dictatorship do strike a chord, in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteYet, I think that the materials you've shared miss one fundamental point: the mentioned surveys seem to be focused only on one section of the examined population, the so called Generation Y, thus dealing only with those very youths that do stay home, dreaming of ending out landing a job as civil servants or in one of the (few) big national corporations. I'm of the opinion that those surveys fail to take into account all those cohorts of highly skilled, learned and experienced Spanish young adults equipped with enough ambition and entrepreneurship who do flee, on a yearly basis, to seek better paid jobs or to set up their own businesses elsewhere, in a country that allows them to dream, to experiment, to innovate. The same can be said, with little or no difference, of their Italian peers. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis back in 2008, hundreds of thousands of Italian youngsters have moved abroad, most of them settling down in London and Germany, many others have travelled all the way to Australia, the last frontier, the ultimate promised land. Did they lack entrepreneurship or ambition? Far from it. They simply found countries with fewer obstacles that hinder their projects and a more efficient bureaucracy to assist them.
All in all, I wouldn't be so harsh with most south European millennials. They don't seem neither less ambitious nor less skilled than their fathers – it's quite the opposite, I guess – they just happen to have been born into a pretty different world. In fact, they are much more similar to their grandfathers, who faced famine and tried their fortune migrating to faraway continents in order to survive – than to their fathers, who took advantage of the postwar economic and demographic boom.
Not that I know much in this subject, but it's good to see your point of view. Perhaps they also need some good technological solutions, like microsoft dynamics ax software which I implemented a while ago.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with the evidence that Spaniards have a lack of skills when it comes to starting up a business. It's not our strong suit. But otherwise, we shouldn't look down on public servants' jobs. We would do a disservice to teachers, policemen, doctors and so on. He who wants to be a public servant in order not to work, he had better look for a different job, for the good of our society.
ReplyDelete