Extra Credit: entrepreneurship education is coming of age in America's classrooms. Find out which schools make the grade in our 2nd annual top 100 entrepreneurial colleges and universities

Entrepreneur, May, 2004 by Mark Henricks

Entrepreneurship education used to be a few courses taught in a few business schools. Then it became a lot of courses in a lot of business schools. Now it's becoming much more, including full-fledged doctoral degree programs, university departments, endowed professorships, and even a change in the way entire universities approach educating their students.

"The great new turf in the next three to four years is the massive support for 'entrepreneurship across the curriculum efforts," says David Newton, founder and CEO of TechKnowledge Point Corp., the Santa Barbara California-based venture research firm that compiled the data for Entrepreneur's 2nd Annual Top l00 Entrepreneurial College and Universities. Newton, who is also professor of entrepreneurial finance at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and other entrepreneurship educators say the cross-curriculum movement promises to institutionalize entrepreneurial thinking in higher education outside of the business school, making it part of far more students' educations.

"It's having biology, sociology, pre-med, engineering and sports medicine students take one or two entrepreneurship courses during their studies," says Newton. The reason educators are embracing entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurial thinking is becoming recognized as fundamental to developing skills in analysis, communication, critical thinking, innovation and other competencies of higher education. "A high-quality liberal arts education is now viewed as a perfect complement to an entrepreneurship education and perspective, and vice versa."

Other educators see similar expansion of entrepreneurship education. "It's going beyond the traditional boundaries of business schools in terms of where it's located," says William B. Gartner, professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California. Indeed, entrepreneurship programs have sprung up at universities that don't even have business schools, appearing as part of sociology, engineering or other curricula.

While entrepreneurship is spreading across more curricula and institutions, it is also being refined, according to the results of our 2004 study. This year's ranking looked at an increasing number of characteristics to improve precision. Among the changes Newton describes are more carefully defining incubators and technology transfer initiatives, and allowing subcategories within program offerings where there's more than one focus.

More data and greater precision are good ideas from the prospective student's point of view, says Scott Shane, professor of economics and entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "There's getting to be a much greater divergence among the providers of entrepreneurship education," says Shane. "It matters more where you're getting your education. It used to be that everybody offered the same thing. Now people are focusing on different topics, using different tools, and applying different techniques in the classroom. It's more important to be an educated consumer."

Changes between the first rankings in 2003 and this year's are many but are mostly modest. Five programs, including Babson College; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; The University of Arizona; University of California, Berkeley; and University of Maryland, College Park, repeated as members of the top tier of national Comprehensive programs. Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), however, both dropped out of the top tier (see "Changing of the Guard" on page 76).

Ball State University; California State University, Fresno; St. Louis University; University of Oregon; and University of Portland appeared for a second year in the top tier of the regional Comprehensive program rankings. Elsewhere, new faces showed up, including Temple University among national reputation institutions and Auburn University in the regional group.

GAINING STATUS

In general, the popularity of entrepreneurship continues unabated in higher education. "It's growing rapidly on a long-term trend," says Shane. "If anything, the trend of entrepreneurship education is stronger than business in general. We're seeing declining enrollment in MBA programs but increasing enrollment in graduate entrepreneurship programs." One mason for rising enrollment in entreprencurship programs is the growing number of college students, thanks to a baby boomlet now washing through higher education. Another reason is the changing perception of traditional employment as a source of security. "The social contract with large companies has broken down," says Shane. "People view starting their own companies as less risky than employment."

Today's students represent another shift, away from those who flocked to e-commerce programs and other flash-in-the-pan features of premillennial business education. "A few years ago, I was getting very disturbed because, when students thought about entrepreneurship, they thought it meant a quick investment and a lot of money," says Don Kuratko, professor of entrepreneurship at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. "We're starting to see students learn how to really be entrepreneurs, how to bootstrap, how to manage, how to be committed to creating something with value."