Last night during the State of the Union address, President Obama proposed making college more affordable, and talked about forgiving college loans based on salary and public service.  He also mentioned how important entrepreneurs are to our society and to job creation.

If an developer at Apple leaves to start a new business and hires a few people to get going, I see how that will help create jobs.  A tax credit for the entrepreneur would be very helpful if it happens.

But let’s take a step back.  If there were incentives for corporations of any size to hire recent college grads, wouldn’t that help more than anything else?  Here’s my logic:

• If a company hires a new grad, then the new grad is more likely to pay back their school loans.  Use the money we would have forgiven to fund university recruiting.
• Many successful entrepreneurs come after working for top-tier organizations in tech, finance, retail, and manufacturing… jobs often obtained initially through university recruitment.
• Corporate sponsors at universities help fund career services centers – without these universities would have higher costs and would pass them down to students.
• And last, large organizations need staff to university recruiting departments which will create and/or save jobs.  Medium sized businesses that don’t do college recruiting might start if they get incentives, and would need to hire university recruiters.

I am sure there are some holes in my thinking, and I’ll leave it up to comments, but right now I’m thinking Senator Weingarten has a nice ring to it