The successful entrepreneur is the business star of our time, embodying buzzy traits like hustle, resourcefulness and “grit.” This idolization of the self-made CEO has not only normalized a career path that was once considered daring but influenced traditional paths as well. Job descriptions now often use entrepreneurial phrases like “start-up mindset,” “navigating ambiguity” or having the capacity to “thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment” to attract new candidates to their ranks.

As traditional corporate culture has merged with entrepreneurship ethos, it provides young people with more options than ever for bringing their ideas to life. And although there’s plenty of mythmaking around the college-dropout-turned-billionaire, the reality for many young people is a pathway through post-secondary education. According to Statistics Canada, “In 2021, 30 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds had a bachelor’s degree, 24 per cent  had a college diploma, 12 per cent had earned a master’s or doctorate, and 9 per cent had a trade certificate.”

So if entrepreneurial attributes are prized assets in corporate culture, and starting a new business is more accessible than ever, a young person might wonder: Why choose? Can an educational pathway be optimized for entrepreneurial success while still following a traditional path? And if so, how?

It was in this arena that University of Toronto professor Shiri Breznitz and her co-authors Qiantao Zhang and Chiara Marzocchi entered in a series of research outputs based on data from the University of Toronto’s Alumni Impact Survey 2017.

Breznitz is an economic geographer by training and has spent much of her career focusing on how universities contribute to local economies, such as through innovation and entrepreneurship. She says that she saw government and public discussion linking STEM-focused education to those areas, and it made her want to see if the link existed or was just a common assumption.

Her instincts were right. Data from the Alumni Survey, in addition to other research in the space, showed that, indeed, dual STEM degrees are not a path that typically leads to entrepreneurship and that those graduates tend to land in well-compensated full-time roles. There is, however, a body of evidence showing that diverse combinations of knowledge (i.e. degrees) spark entrepreneurial drive. One of the most famous examples, Breznitz says, is Steve Jobs who valued diverse backgrounds in his employees, believing it was crucial for innovation and a well-rounded perspective. Jobs himself took calligraphy classes, which strongly influenced Apple’s fonts. He sought individuals with a broad range of experiences, including those from technical, artistic and humanities fields, who could synthesize ideas and see the bigger picture. He stated, "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."

Breznitz and her team wanted to investigate what combination of education and work experience had the most positive outcomes on entrepreneurship and how the sequence of them affected it. “We were trying to understand if we could break it out and say, ‘if you take this [knowledge] path, you are more likely to become an entrepreneur,’” she says. 

The Alumni Impact Survey tracks social, cultural and economic impact that U of T graduates have on society using indicators such as employment rates, ventures started or volunteerism. Using the survey, Breznitz and her colleagues whittled down and merged two sets of data: 21,360 responses from the initial survey and 4,059 respondents from a follow-up survey. 

Their findings were clear – and elegant: Diversity matters.

“We found that the order of degrees matters,” Breznitz says. “People with STEM undergrad and non-STEM post-graduate are more likely to become entrepreneurs, and international education is more important than international experience when it comes to the propensity of becoming entrepreneurs.”

The latter finding was surprising, she notes.

“I thought international employment would have just the same impact as international education, if not more. But most Canadians who work internationally continue working internationally. But they are not the ones to start companies.”

These findings are presented in “Educational diversity and work experience paths towards entrepreneurship,” published on Small Business Economics journal in March 2025. Its insights can be applied in three main areas of work.

Employers that prize entrepreneurial attributes (innovative or expansive approaches) can seek candidates with a combination of STEM and non-STEM degrees, topped up with a semester or more abroad. Breznitz notes that, for Canadians, the educational experience needs to take place overseas, not in the U.S., and ideally be for enough time to become immersed in a different culture,

“[When] you are absorbed in some other culture, it opens your eyes, you see things differently, she says. “You think and understand things in different ways.”

Similarly, students focused on bringing an idea to market under their own auspices should take advantage of opportunities to study abroad and, ideally, if they are pursuing multiple degrees, earn them in diverse fields.

The third potential output from the findings is in policy. Breznitz argues that the Canadian government should focus on incentives for luring expat students back to Canada to start companies instead of setting them up elsewhere. She notes that the cultural conversation is most often about international students coming here, but we should be focusing on Canadian students who study elsewhere and remain there.

“We're not trying to convince Canadians to come back and it's too bad,” she says, especially considering other nations do have such policies in place.

With the pace of technological change accelerating so quickly, thinking differently could be a worker’s greatest asset, whether they are their own boss or just thinking like one. It’s a state of mind that could benefit Canada as a whole.

Want even more entreprenerial research? Subscribe to the Rotman Insights Hub for more startup insights delivered straight to your inbox every other week.