Serious learning. Not a gap year spent traveling Europe.

Harvard Business Review reports.

Why I Challenged My Kids to Start Companies Before College

When our two daughters finished their high school studies, my wife and I made them a deal: we would pay for college, but first they each had to run their own business for at least a year. In our view, this was an important entrepreneurial track to their education. They needed to know how the world works before they could know what they wanted from college.

It was serious learning. We weren’t sending them off on a gap year to travel Europe — we would help them roll up their sleeves and figure out what it took to run a business. Unfortunately, your typical high school curriculum doesn’t cover that subject, but we felt they needed to interact with people in a commercial fashion. My daughters are now in their 30s, and looking back, they agree it made them smarter about business and more satisfied in their careers.