Honor roll: by teaching everything from planning to perseverance, the schools in our 3rd annual top 100 colleges and universities give their students a competitive advantage in the real world

Entrepreneur, April, 2005 by Mark Henricks

Entrepreneurship programs increasingly offer students access to capital as well as stoicism. Hamner brings in angel and institutional VCs, private equity buyout firms and other financial industry people to talk to students and, sometimes, initiate contacts that result in funding. Hamner adds that the university itself sometimes invests in companies begun by alumni.

Most entrepreneurship programs also stress experiential learning, urging students to take internships in operating companies. Some focus on placing students in fast-growth ventures; others stress international opportunities where students can live and work overseas. Some will pay part of the student's salary to encourage employers--many also alums--to take a student trainee.

The students themselves often engage in what amount to post-graduate internships, working for a few years in companies founded by other entrepreneurs while learning, building wealth and accumulating contacts. After earning his MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1995, Ed Hubbard worked for Dell and Intel Corp. for five years before starting United Devices Inc. in 2002. The Austin, Texas, company, which developed a technology that allows thousands of computers to pool unused power to crack complex problems, has 50 employees and over $30 million in funding. "I think [the education] does help," says Hubbard, 38, who always planned to start his own company.

So is entrepreneurship education the way to go? Betz of Orca Gear thinks so. "If it wasn't for this," he says, 'Td be going on The Apprentice."

TOP 10 NATIONAL/REGIONAL PROGRAMS

As ranked by program directors, faculty and alumni

1. Babson College

2. The University of Arizona

3. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

4. Indiana University, Bloomington

5. Southern Methodist University

6. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

7. Massachusetts institute of Technology

8. California State University, Fresno

9. University of Colorado at Boulder

10. Wake Forest University

TOP 5 PROGRAM DIRECTORS

As ranked by their peers

1. BILL BYGRAVE, STEPHEN SPINELLI, JEFF TIMMONS: Babson College

2. DON KURATKO: Indiana University, Bloomington

3. STAN MANDEL: Wake Forest University

4. GARY LIBECAP: The University of Arizona

5. JEFF REID: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE: Curious about what you'll actually get in a top entrepreneurship education program? The University of Houston's Center for Entrepreneurship and innovation, opened in 1991, offers a glimpse.

Since 1995, Houston has offered a bachelor's of business administration in entrepreneurship. Its six-course general entrepreneurship program is unlike most in that it was designed from scratch to educate entrepreneurs as opposed to simply repackaging existing marketing, finance and management classes to create a curriculum. Both Ph.D. academics and startup veterans are among its five faculty.

Each of the 33 students in each class must come up with an idea for a business. That idea is further developed during the two-year program through creating business and marketing plans, and performing other analyses. "When you graduate, you walk out the door and start this business," says Daniel E. Steppe, director of the comprehensive program at the University of Houston.