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There are those who describe the current, faster-and-faster-moving marketplace as a fourth industrial revolution, and the best entrepreneurship programs are those that help students appropriately speed up and, when necessary, scale up their ideas, from unicorns to innovative business models. Students who enroll at these schools will find themselves at the forefront of innovation and development, and often with an interdisciplinary focus that acknowledges the interconnectedness of today’s economy. Perhaps more importantly, they will also get opportunities to enrich themselves and their communities, adding economic and social value through innovation, team building, and leadership.
Entrepreneurship encompasses so much that it’s almost more than an academic discipline. Studying entrepreneurship involves building self-confidence and business connections alike, developing creativity, and getting real-world results. That’s why we’ve worked with The Princeton Review for fifteen years to point students in the right direction of the top-ranked undergraduate and graduate programs for entrepreneurs. This year’s survey considered more than 250 colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe, and evaluated a multitude of factors. We considered not just the school’s programming but also its graduates’ success rates in the business world, the number of mentors available for students, and more. Read on to see which schools made the grade. (To read more about our methodology, pick up the Dec. 2021 issue of Entrepreneur.)
1. University of Houston (#1 West)
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Photo courtesy of the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston
Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship
Houston, TX
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 40
Tuition: $11,569 (in-state); $26,839 (out-of-state)
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 698
What Sets Us Apart
Our program at the University of Houston has been built around the needs of students and the desire to help them develop personally and professionally. Our student body is 45% Hispanic or Black, more than 50% first generation in college. They typically have not had leadership opportunities and often lack confidence and connections. If we only taught them how to market products or manage cash, we would not be positioning them to succeed. Consequently, we focus on providing tools and resources, so students become well-rounded leaders who can build strong relationships. We encourage and facilitate human development through numerous enrichment and outreach initiatives including mentoring, retreats, and others. Resources and partners needed to implement our program include:
• committed mentors (we have over 500 who participate with us)
• a staff member to train mentors and manage mentorship programs
• program managers to run extracurriculars
• professional partners such as banks and law firms
• scholarships to enable students to devote themselves to program activities: roughly 80% of our students have jobs to pay their way through school (we demand full commitment to our program, and scholarships allow students to work fewer hours)
• faculty who work together in a coordinated fashion
• collaborations with other academic units: the Colleges of Engineering and Natural Science and Math, Departments of Computer Science, Industrial Design (College of Architecture), Graphic Arts (School of Art), School of Communications, and the Law Center
2. Babson College (#1 Northeast)
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Courtesy of Babson College
Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship
Babson Park, MA
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 39
Tuition: $55,714
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 256
What Sets Us Apart
Babson College educates entrepreneurial leaders who create great economic and social value everywhere. Entrepreneurship is more than an academic discipline at Babson; it is a way of life. We teach entrepreneurship as a method so that students practice Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® (ET & A) in a variety of curricular and co-curricular settings, both on campus and around the world.
Entrepreneurship is a required course for every single Babson student, and 70% of students take one of more than 70 electives. Babson College has the largest number of dedicated entrepreneurial faculty in the world. The entrepreneurship department has 51 faculty members: 23 full-time academics and 28 adjuncts, 100% of whom have both entrepreneurial and teaching experience. We have trained over 5,000 faculty from all over the world in our unique pedagogy of teaching entrepreneurship, in our Price Babson Entrepreneurship Educators Program.
Our campus is a living/learning laboratory with six entrepreneurial centers where students can pursue their passions for social innovation, startups, family entrepreneurship, women-led entrepreneurship, fashion, and food solutions, in accelerators, laboratories, and other immersive experiences. The Weissman Foundry is a unique prototyping and experimentation lab for our students. Babson’s students can also pursue their entrepreneurial interest in our living and learning residential communities, such as eTower, CODE, and CREATE/theStudio.
3. Brigham Young University (#2 West)
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Courtesy of Brigham Young University
Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology
Provo, UT
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 58
Tuition: $5,790 (LDS); $11,580 (Non-LDS)
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 419
What Sets Us Apart
After careful review, we believe Brigham Young University has the finest integrated core for teaching entrepreneurship in the world. The curriculum reflects the latest academic thinking and research in the field and is augmented with real-world experiential learning components and frameworks.
Our curriculum is deeply rooted in lean startup and design thinking principles and practices. In fact, we were one of the first universities to comprehensively adopt this approach in our entrepreneurship education. To this day, many schools around the world continue to teach their students to write static and outdated business plans instead of identifying, testing, and pivoting on key business model hypotheses.
Lean methodologies help entrepreneurs operate more effectively and efficiently within the areas of uncertainty that they face every day as they search for a repeatable and scalable business model and aim to achieve product/market fit. This approach is allowing us to educate smarter entrepreneurs who launch validated ventures that last. Cutting-edge academic offerings combined with deep mentoring is our secret sauce.
We also recently launched a new venture studio program called Blue Forge Studio. While venture studios are popping up these days in the industry, we believe this may be the first program of its kind on a university campus. It is designed to provide startups with access to critical human capital and expertise versus financial capital.
4. The University of Texas at Austin (#3 West)
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Courtesy of The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin
Entrepreneurship Minor
Austin, TX
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered:
Tuition: $11,448(in-state); $40,032(out-of-state)
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 3700
What Sets Us Apart
The location of the University of Texas is the most distinctive approach to our undergraduate entrepreneurship education. Staff and faculty work closely with government leaders from the capital of Texas, entrepreneurs located downtown, and large companies located in Silicon Hills and at The Domain.
5. University of Southern California (#4 West)
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Courtesy of the Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Los Angeles, CA
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 24
Tuition: $60,275
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 125
What Sets Us Apart
The University of Southern California is a large institution; however, Greif operates like a startup. We continuously pivot and adapt offerings to meet students’ needs, doing our best to find where they are and what works best for them. USC entrepreneurship education is centralized at Greif, a hybrid unit encompassing curricular and co-curricular offerings.
We believe that every student is unique and has different needs, and we partner with other schools to offer seven minors supported by complementary co-curricular programming. Our curriculum caters to each student in their entrepreneurial journey, and we provide entrepreneurial opportunities via a founder pipeline or an entrepreneurial mindset pathway. Bridging theory and practice by utilizing faculty (expert practitioners and academics) who simultaneously have experience in both, students are provided release time to support co-curricular programming.
Every student graduating with an entrepreneurship minor is equipped to either form a venture or use their entrepreneurial mindset in their chosen profession. Either way, Greif produces students who will be more competitive and successful in the California economy (fifth largest in the world) and the global marketplace. Our graduates become part of an extensive, supportive alumni network, including the USC Alumni Entrepreneurship Network with an active membership of 1,700. As well, Marshall has 90,000 living alumni across 101 countries and USC has 437,000 living alumni from 150 countries.
6. Tecnológico de Monterrey (International)
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Courtesy of Tecnológico de Monterrey
Institute for Entrepreneurship Eugenio Garza Lagüera
Monterrey, Mexico
Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 80
Tuition: varies by program
Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 1,354
What Sets Us Apart
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS INGRAINED IN THE UNIVERSITY’S DNA
Entrepreneurial skills are developed in 100% of the undergrad students. The ‘Tec21’ model enhances entrepreneurship education for everyone, transforming course-classroom-lectures into a challenge-projects-mentorship. The undergrad programs are in English. Our alumni have historically created 2.8 million jobs worldwide.
AN UNPARALLELED ECOSYSTEM
Campuses are new-venture generator ecosystems. We are recognized as the leading entrepreneurship university in Latin America, comprising 21 business incubators and 11 technology parks with liaison offices in Silicon Valley and China. Since COVID-19 a virtual alternative has been successfully developed.
NEW INCUBATION MODEL
Ei Zone (Zona Ei) is a new model for new business creation and growth. Incubators and accelerators are transformed in this new venture development model.
TOP GLOBAL PARTNERS
We have alliances with top entrepreneurship universities (Babson, BYU, Berkeley) and accelerators (Y-Combinator, 500 Startups). We also have connection programs with China and Israel.
SPONSORING THE BEST GLOBAL RESEARCH
Tec…