Heres a novel way to graduate from college unburdened by student loans: start your own business and create jobs in the process. If youre thinking that sounds far-fetched, think about these students who participated in a young entrepreneurs conference at Johnson B. Smith University, in Charlotte, North Carolina: One young man opened up a barbershop that is now a full-service chain of salons; a woman created a public relations and marketing firm; and another man formed a high-tech digital company.

The White House, which wants to see that kind of innovation replicated on Black college campuses across the nation, hosted a forum on entrepreneurship Monday that was attended by leaders from several HBCUs and minority serving institutions, business owners and government officials. Its an offshoot of the Small Business Administrations (SBA) Young Entrepreneurs initiative launched several months ago.

We determined that it would be good for us to connect to our historically Black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions to ensure that those institutions that are so critical to preparing the next generation of leadership in our country had the opportunity to talk about entrepreneurship and how they can do the best job possible to identify, nurture and support an entrepreneurial spirit on their campuses, SBA deputy administrator Marie Johns told reporters on a conference call.

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