Can entrepreneurial skills be taught?
Historically, they weren’t, according to "A Brief History of Tertiary Entrepreneurship Education in the United States,” a 1998 paper for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) written by Jerome Katz, who has written several books on entrepreneurialism. In fact, the first course in entrepreneurship at a graduate business school wasn’t offered until 1947.
Entrepreneurial schools, though, have become increasingly popular in the United States because corporations are less likely to employees offer stable long-term employment and employees are less willing to work for one corporation for their entire career. The dream of starting and running a business is very strong in the United States in 2014.
When I studied the issue of the top colleges for entrepreneurship, I expected to find a strong correlation between the USA’s best business schools for students who wanted to earn an MBA, but I was wrong. The top 10 graduate business schools in 2014 are Harvard, Stanford, Pennsylvania, Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northwestern, California-Berkeley, Columbia, Dartmouth, and New York University, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Stanford is the only Top 10 business school that is ranked among the top 25 undergraduate colleges for entrepreneurship. Five of the 10 cracked the top 25 graduate colleges for entrepreneurship – Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, and New York University. Harvard was the school that offered the first course in entrepreneurship in 1947. Warren Buffett, pictured above, graduated Columbia.
Before doing the research, I couldn’t have guessed in a million years that Babson College had the best undergraduate college for entrepreneurship and the second best graduate college for entrepreneurship. I’m not sure if heard of Babson, but it’s the best, according to The Princeton Review. The rankings were based on, among other things:
1. Students’ post-graduation achievements 2. The percentage of teachers who are entrepreneurs 3. The school’s noncurriculum-based entrepreneurial activities 4. The school’s curriculum, including whether it offers courses in Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship, New Product Development, and Venture Capital 5. The quality of internship opportunities students have at nearby businesses
The other criteria for the best undergraduate and graduate schools of entrepreneurship are listed in “Top Colleges for Entrepreneurship 2013.” More than 2,000 colleges and universities were surveyed.
Here are the Top 25 undergraduate schools of entrepreneurship:
1. Babson (Mass.) College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 11
2. University of Houston’s Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 41
3. University of Southern California’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 94 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 50
4. Syracuse University’s Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 12
5. Baylor (Texas) University’s Baylor Entrepreneurship Program Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 67
6. University of Oklahoma 7. Stanford (Calif.) University 8. Washington University in St. Louis 9. Brigham Young (Utah) University 10. Northeastern (Mass.) University 11. University of Missouri-Kansas City 12. Miami (Ohio) University 13. Temple (Pa.) University 14. Clarkson (N.Y.) University 15. University of Maryland 16. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 17. University of Arizona 18. University of Dayton (Ohio) 19. Bradley (Ill.) University 20. Lehigh (Pa.) University 21. University of Iowa 22. Texas Christian University 23. St. Louis University 24. De Paul (Ill.) University 25. Baruch College, The City University of New York Here are the Top 25 graduate schools of entrepreneurship:
1. University of Michigan’s Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 53 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 2
2. Babson (Mass.) College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 17
3. Harvard (Mass.) University’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 40 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 7
4. Rice (Texas) University’s Jones Graduate School Entrepreneurship Program Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 5
5. University of Virginia’s Batten Institute Percentage of faculty who are entrepreneurs: 100 Percentage of recent grads who started a business: 6
6. Stanford (Calif.) University 7. University of Texas at Austin 8. Brigham Young (Utah) University 9. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 10. University of Southern California 11. University of Chicago 12. Washington University in St. Louis 13. University of Washington 14. University of Arizona 15. University of Oklahoma 16. University of Maryland 17. University of South Florida 18. University of Louisville 19. Temple (Pa.) University 20. University of Missouri-Kansas City 21. Columbia (N.Y.) University 22. Oklahoma State University 23. University of Utah 24. New York University 25. George Washington (Washington, D.C.) University
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