Washington — If you want to be your own boss, it helps to go to college. But it helps even more to serve in the military.

Those are among the key findings of a study issued this week by the Office of Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The study — by Chad Moutray, the office’s chief economist and a former dean of business administration at Robert Morris College, in Chicago — finds that having some college education increases the chances of self-employment by 3.3 percent. A baccalaureate degree boosts the odds by 4.4 percent, and taking some graduate-level courses raises the likelihood by 8.3 percent.

But those numbers are dwarfed by the advantages of having prior military experience, which the survey identified as the single strongest predictor of a person’s starting his or her own business. Depending on the type of service, a military career increases the likelihood of being self-employed by 9.4 percent to 10.8 percent, the study found.

The study, however, doesn’t explain the disparity. Instead it suggests more research into such questions as whether the self-employed tend to be “jacks-of-all-trades” who need a more general education, or whether in some cases they need more specialized training. —Paul Basken