THE ISSUE: In our recession-ridden economy with meager job growth, many students may feel apathetic toward venturing off on their own as entrepreneurs.

OUR STANCE: WKU offers a number of resources to help students get their businesses off the ground, and the Herald believes students should be taking advantage of the help of offices that support entrepreneurship.

If there is anything that living in the “digital age” has taught us, it is that one can go from an average college student to a multimillionaire in a few short years, thanks to the help of the Web.

Matt Mullenweg of WordPress.com and Kevin Systrom of Instagram are just a couple of many college students and young adults that started billion-dollar empires from small ideas.

What is often left out from their stories, however, is that they needed business start-ups or some other type of help to get off the ground. While there is no saying that every college student or young adult can eventually build a huge empire, they can start their own business. Lucky for them, WKU offers many of the tools needed to help a small business get up off the ground.

Students shouldn’t wait until they graduate with a degree to move forward with a business idea. Often, the programs at WKU can help with much of the work.

WKU offers the Business Accelerator Program, grants and assistance to students looking to turn an idea into a business. These programs are designed to ask students the hard questions they need to find answers to for their business to succeed.

Student Government Association president Cory Dodds recently wrote a letter to the editor in the Herald urging students to take advantage of what WKU has to offer. Olympic goldmedalist and WKU alum Claire Donahue recently spoke to the class of 2016 and urged them to follow set goals to achieve. There are also opportunities for students who have more academic interests. The Office of Sponsored Programs assists students in obtaining outside funds.

There are also Faculty-Undergraduate Student Engagement (FUSE) grants that offer support for students in “research, creative and scholarly actives, and/or artistic performances.” Not to mention the Office of Scholar Development that helps students find scholarships for their interest and pursuits. There is help and money out there for any idea or dream that students want to take off the ground.

WKU students will be smart to take advantage of the opportunities their school offers them.

If you didn’t start as a freshman, there is still time to get started. While the “You can be whatever you want to be” mantra that we have heard since we were children is tired and old, there is some truth to that statement.

After all, if you didn’t want to achieve some goal of yours, you wouldn’t be in college. It would serve students well to utilize all the resources on our campus.

This editorial represents the majority opinion of the Herald’s 14-member editorial board.