Anna Schroeder calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur.”

In August 2011, she painted a pair of Vans and posted pictures to reddit, a popular social news website. Schroeder received an overwhelmingly positive response.

“People said, ‘I would buy these. Sell them!’” She said. “The Internet told me to do it, so I did.”

Since then, she has painted Daft Punk logos or glow-in-the-dark piano keys or Indiana Jones desert scenes onto canvas shoes and shipped them to Internet clients. She has customers throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and even Japan.

Schroeder, an English major, is part of a phenomenon of college student entrepreneurs. It is by no means a new trend, but in this bleak recession–when  the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 8.9 percent–it could mean something different to what it has meant in the past. It could be a lifeline out of unemployment.

Anna Schroeder, a UNC senior, sells hand-painted shoes like these on her etsy.com site. The UNC minor in entrepreneurship gives students the knowledge to create their own businesses. Photo by Anna Schroeder.

Not enough time

Although some college student entrepreneurs run profitable businesses, they must balance the challenges of the business with the demands of their coursework.

Despite international success, she said she has slowed down her business this semester because it was too time-consuming.

She said one pair of shoes takes 10 hours to finish. With the way her business currently operates, Schroeder cannot turn this from a hobby to a full-time job after graduation.

Ryan Cocca said he has trouble making time for schoolwork while running his business. Cocca co-founded Thrillife., a clothing brand with a commitment to social consciousness.

Interactive online media, such as videos featuring local artists, are as much a part of the brand as the T-shirts. Friends say Cocca lives and breathes Thrillife. But Cocca said he has put his business on the backburner this semester to catch his breath.

Still, Cocca said he has big plans for Thrillife.

First, he wants to fully establish a Chapel Hill branch, Thrill City. Then he wants to expand into branches around the country. Currently he’s looking into St. Petersburg, Fla., and Boone, N.C., which are both university towns.

Cocca, a junior at UNC, said he is running out of time to do all this.

“I would love to work with Thrillife. after graduation,” Cocca says. “But I don’t know that it’ll be developed enough to be a ‘liveable’ job right away.”

‘Not right away’ is not necessarily the end of the world. Just ask John Chipouras, a May 2011 UNC-CH graduate. In his sophomore year of college, Chipouras was recruited by a high school friend to a project to develop energy-tracking software.

Tracking energy was very cutting edge then, with corporations like Google and IBM making development forays into the technology. Chipouras, a business major, recognized the potential market value of the project and pushed it to the next level.

The project became a startup called Token Energy, officially registered as a non-profit organization in December 2009. Several buildings on North Carolina State University‘s campus use Token Energy products to get easy data on how big their carbon footprints are.

However, Token Energy was dissolved during Chipouras’ senior year.

“Due to the ages of the people involved, our biggest problem was talent retention,” Chipouras says. “The business helped those involved get other really great jobs, and everyone chose to take those jobs.”

Today, Chipouras works for Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, a job he got right after graduation, incidentally.

“I definitely want to go work in a startup again or start a company,” Chipouras said. “I have a job I like now, but eventually I will go take a risk and apply all the lessons I learned from the first time.”

In the meantime, Chipouras is soaking up all the savvy he can at his Bank of America job.

Entrepreneurship: the minor

There are programs at UNC-CH that try to facilitate this applied business learning. The largest of these is the entrepreneurship minor, launched in 2005. Students of any major (except business) can apply to the minor to learn how to make their enterprise dreams come true.

John Stewart, an economics professor and director of the entrepreneurship minor, said he teaches classes jointly with local entrepreneurs and sometimes travels with students on the Beijing summer internship program.

He said the courses in the minor combine standard classroom teaching with more hands-on activities like a business plan-writing workshop. The workshop actually feeds well into one of UNC’s other entrepreneurship programs, Carolina Challenge.

Carolina Challenge is a business venture competition with a $15,000 grand prize, for students and organized by students. Student venture founders team up and go through multiple judging rounds. The top 4 finalists all receive some prize money. Last year, 60 teams entered Carolina Challenge.

However, there is an inherent Peter Pan dilemma to student startups. The founders approach them like they do campus clubs: they’re something to get involved in in college, but not a long-term commitment.

“There’s no heavy risk at this stage,” Cocca explains. “Most of us at college are not paying our own bills. There’s some safety to experiment.

But that safety net will eventually be pulled out from under the students. The students have to grow up, leaving their startups in Neverland.

Sustainable businesses

The percentage of student startups that survive after graduation is not documented.

“Carolina Challenge doesn’t have an official tracking system in place for former teams,” said Carrie Harbinson is the program manager of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Kenan-Flager Business School.

For some students, the entrepreneurial experience has enabled them to received different job opportunities.

Because of his entrepreneurial experience, Chipouras was assigned to a new division in Bank of America.

Ultimately, the minor hopes to encourage students to turn their business ideas into reality.

“The goal is to take people with an interest in something else – be it journalism, religion or Spanish – and teach them the skills and the process of taking an idea into a sustainable business,” Stewart said.

This article was reported for the 256 feature writing class at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.