[dukeluke]

The barrier to entry may be lower for some parts of the market, but I don't know if the barrier to entrepreneurship is lower overall. Growing inequality and lack of growth potential for the uneducated means only those who have already made it can afford the startup capital(not just in equipment, but in time too) needed to get a business going. In fact, the rate of small business creation has been declining: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201...

[padobson]

I've read a lot of the same slowing entrepreneurship statistics. Ben Casselman[0] over at FiveThirtyEight has written some good pieces about it.

It seems to be directly linked to personal debt. Most individuals are more risk averse because they have to work to pay off their debts. New college graduates are a great example: they have huge college loans, so a chunk of the potential entrepreneurs have to take jobs instead of starting a business.

I'd call that a big negative externality to the accessibility of loans for higher education. If it was me, I'd rather have a few more blue collar entrepreneurs and a few less white collar employees who'd rather be running their own business.

[0]https://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/ben-casselman/

[bante]

"I'd call that a big negative externality to the accessibility of loans for higher education."

That's only one side of it though. The other being the expectations discussed in the article. You see this quite clearly in housing markets where the price is dictated by the profile of who's going to live there and when they are expected to pay off the loan. A house with an expected 100 year loan in a professional market is of course much more expensive than a 30 year loan in a worker market. For what could be more or less the exact same thing.