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The growth of Entrepreneurship education programs makes it important that a benchmarking assessment be done to evaluate the opportunity for business schools offering entrepreneurship courses. This paper uses the 2001 Success magazine “Top 50” ranking, a qualitative evaluation of 21 highly thought of programs in the United States and the UK, and the SBA 2000 National Survey of Entrepreneurship Education for the benchmarking measures. Specific courses offered, frequency of offerings, and a review of outside activities are used to show differing levels of program development and what emerging programs can do to achieve the levels of performance of the leaders in the field. For example the most offered course in entrepreneurship programs in the Success top 50 is not a business plan course, but a new venture finance course. This and other insights are provided in the paper.
Entrepreneurship is widely recognized as the critical force driving most economies around the world as it is the primary factor in encouraging the growth of business, developing new employment opportunities, and fueling economic growth (Gorman, Hanlon, & King, 1997; Reynolds, Hay, Bygrave, Camp, & Autio, 2000; Thomas & Mueller, 2000). Realizing the importance and power of entrepreneurship, the current generation is more concerned with personal success and fulfillment than seeking the security of aspiring to a mid-level management position in a major corporation, which to these 20 to 30 year olds does not exist as was seen in corporate downsizing of the 1980s and recently reinforced by the debacle at Enron. This generation seeks to be self-reliant and its members believe in using their imagination combined with hard work to achieve independence and success (Charney & Libecap, 2000). Students are now entering business schools with the intention of learning the skills that are necessary for them to create their own business or contribute meaningfully to growing a small company (Farrell, 1984). Therefore, the goal of this paper is to provide a benchmark for the development of entrepreneurship education programs. There is no question that the idea of entrepreneurship as being a fad has passed as recent figures indicate that more than 1,500 colleges and universities offer entrepreneurship training, more than 100 university-based entrepreneurship centers have been developed and more than 270 endowed positions in entrepreneurship created (Charney & Libecap, 2000). With the growth in popularity of entrepreneurship among students many academics have been skeptical of its merits as an academic discipline, and have argued that entrepreneurship is not something that can be taught and that graduates with a degree in entrepreneurship may not be competitive on the traditional job market (Benson, 1992). This criticism has begun to subside as empirical evidence has emerged demonstrating that entrepreneurship can indeed be taught (Charney & Libecap, 2000; Sexton & Bowman-Upton, 1987; Price & Monroe, 1992), with entrepreneurship graduates being three-times as likely to start a business (Charney & Libecap, 2000). In addition, it has been shown that entrepreneurship graduates working in large firms earned approximately $23,500 more annually than other business school graduates (Charney & Libecap, 2000). As support of entrepreneurship as a discipline continues to increase and unprecedented demand by students for courses continues to grow, it becomes critical that a benchmark for curriculum development is established. Gary Benson (1992) highlights this by arguing that entrepreneurship has matured and gained credibility as an academic discipline, but the task remains to establish the benchmark of what constitutes a good entrepreneurship program. Currently, there are many different perspectives in the literature on how an entrepreneurship program should be developed including focusing on the content, skills and behavior, mentality and personality of entrepreneurs (Hood & Young, 1993), creating majors, minors, and areas of emphasis (Benson, 1992), structuring the program around strategic development challenges to be modeled after the stage of venture development (McMullan & Long, 1987), developing alternative approaches that develop entrepreneurial imagination (Chia, 1996), using the enterprise learning model (Gibb, 1993), creating a balance between number of courses and degree of integration or between the stages of transition in a firm and the functional approach (Plaschka & Welsch, 1990), and finally, using the business plan, the business life cycle, or business functions as the basis of the program (Hills, 1988). A few scholars have suggested that entrepreneurship programs should be differentiated from small business programs (Gibb, 1993; McMullan & Long, 1987), which stems largely from the lack of a clear conceptualization of entrepreneurship. For the purpose of this paper the authors adopt Babson College’s (2000) definition of entrepreneurship as “a way of thinking and acting that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach and leadership balanced…regardless of the resources currently available and executing on [the] opportunity for the purpose of wealth creation in the private, public and global sectors.” Based on this definition the authors do not support the need to distinguish entrepreneurship from small business programs because both are opportunity seeking with the purpose of creating wealth. Some programs are simply more aggressive, have a better product, or more “practice” elements built into them. It is in this final area of “practice” that we see the importance and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education emerging. This position is supported by other scholars who have argued that the purpose of entrepreneurship education is to “prepare individuals in thought and action to create and successfully administer growing, profitable enterprises thereby enhancing the welfare of society” (Hood & Young, 1993: 113). Therefore, the real value of entrepreneurship education will be realized through its contribution to increasing economic development and job creation by providing individuals the opportunity to shorten the learning curve of developing a business by practicing the entrepreneurial process within the protection of a university setting. The increasing interest in entrepreneurship education has led to the ranking of the best entrepreneurship programs. Two such rankings include Vesper and Gartner’s (1997) ranking of entrepreneurship programs and the Success magazine annual ranking of the “Top 50 Entrepreneurship Programs.” Vesper and Gartner (1997) conducted their ranking through a mail survey sent to the deans of business schools in order to determine how academics judged the quality of entrepreneurship programs. They proposed that while the Success ranking appears valid, academics should take the initiative to determine the criteria by which their programs are ranked. Their recommendation is to use the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as a starting point for discussion of the appropriate criteria. However, the Success magazine “Top 50” has become widely accepted and is conducted on an annual basis. Therefore, the Success magazine ranking is used as a primary source in this study with the goal being to decide what courses and activities are necessary to develop a great entrepreneurship program. The wide differences in criteria for benchmarking entrepreneurship programs lead the authors to take a deductive approach to establishing the benchmark by considering what the best programs in the field are doing in terms of curriculum development and entrepreneurial learning activities outside of class. Thus, in this paper the Success magazine “Top 50” rankings, a qualitative evaluation of 21 highly thought of programs in the United States and the UK, and the SBA 2000 National Survey of Entrepreneurship Education are used to establish the benchmarking measures. Specific courses offered, frequency of offerings and a review of outside activities are used to show differing levels of program development and what emerging programs can do to achieve the levels of performance of the leaders in the field.
The data for this paper is the result of the combination of each author’s independent work in the field, which led to the collaboration of this paper to provide a more complete benchmark of entrepreneurship education. The first two authors conducted an in depth review of the Success magazine “Top 50” entrepreneurship programs and developed a database of the courses, and activities offered, and also the contact information for each of the programs to aid in future studies of entrepreneurship education. Every attempt was made to be as thorough as possible in collecting the information from university web cites, but the authors were unable to obtain information about course offerings at two of the universities resulting in a sample of 48 universities. The third author conducted a qualitative study of 21 highly thought of programs in the United States and Britain by visiting the selected institutions, observing their programs, and discussing the institutions approaches to entrepreneurship education with the faculty and students to discover what set them apart from other programs. The institutions visited include MIT, Harvard Business School, Babson, Bently, Boston University, Georgia Tech, Emory, Kennesaw State, University of Georgia, University of Texas at Austin, Baylor College, Texas A&M, University of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia State University, London Business School, Warwick, City, Kings College, Imperial College, Cambridge, and Cranfield. Finally, the fourth author recognized that there has been little systematic data collection within the field of entrepreneurship education since the Small Business Administration concluded its surveys focusing on entrepreneurship education and training in the United States in 1990 resulting in the current lack of information on entrepreneurship education. This led him to develop a partnership between The George Washington University’s School of Business and Public Management’s Center for Family Enterprise and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to conduct the “National Survey on Entrepreneurial Education and Training” with the goal of stimulating interest to generate new and innovative entrepreneurial curriculum, encouraging educational institutions to expand their activities at the secondary and post secondary levels, and to establish a database as a guide for individuals looking at entrepreneurship programs and to develop new curriculum in small business and entrepreneurship. The respondents to the survey were deans of institutions ranging from four-year undergraduate and graduate universities to two-year community colleges.
Curriculum Development In considering which courses lie at the foundation of what are considered the best entrepreneurship programs the authors found reasonably consistent results across all three sources of data. The review of the Success “Top 50” found that the most widely taught course is New Venture Financing followed by Writing a Business Plan, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Small Business Management, New Venture Growth Strategies, and Small Business Consulting. These courses should thus serve as the core set for the development of an entrepreneurship program’s development. Secondary courses of importance include Family Issues, Technology Development, Entrepreneurship and eCommerce, Second Business Plan Course, International Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Marketing. A complete listing of the course offerings can be referenced in Table 1. The miscellaneous category includes 116 courses that did not fit within any of the 23 courses identified in Table 1, and represent unique courses. These unique courses cover topics ranging from Crisis Management to Entrepreneurship in the Arts. Table 1: Predominant Courses Found in Entrepreneurship Curriculum
According to McKaskill’s qualitative study, the starting point for establishing a “great” entrepreneurship program begins with the foundation subjects. Based on the offerings of the schools visited, these subjects include Opportunity Evaluation, Business Plan Writing, Venture Finance, and Managing Growth. The extended program includes courses on Acquisitions and Mergers, International Entrepreneurship, Technology Commercialization, and Corporate Entrepreneurship. In addition, it appears that there is increasing demand among these schools for courses on Family Business Issues, Small Business Management, and eCommerce Start-ups. The National Survey of Entrepreneurship Education found that the academic base shows most institutions have at least the basic and entrepreneurship course and a small business management course followed by New Venture Creation, Technology and Innovation, and Venture Capital. The remainder of the courses can be referenced in Table 1. An additional insight provided by the survey is that the teaching methods in entrepreneurship courses appear to be “hands on” and allow students extensive practical application of the core concepts. The most widely cited teaching methods can be referenced in Table 2. Table 2: Most Popular Teaching Methods Across all Courses*
*Teaching method could be mentioned for multiple courses
Table 3: Course Descriptions
This review of course descriptions is intended to show the range of courses and the core elements to help develop some consistency in the field. It is unlikely that any institution could offer all of these courses, but the variety does show how programs can be kept “entrepreneurial” and allows programs to focus on their institutions core competencies.
Entrepreneurial education should focus on decision making skills such as problem solving, risk taking, and developing innovation and imagination in addition to the technical skills taught in most of the academic coursework (Rushing, 1990). Active programs provide the best format for the development of these skills and should constitute an important aspect of an entrepreneurship program. In regards to the developmental activities of a great entrepreneurship program the National Survey, McKaskill’s qualitative survey, and the Success “Top 50” see alumni tracking and internships as a priority. Also of importance according to McKaskill’s qualitative survey and the Success “Top 50” are business plan competitions, networking opportunities, and incubators to aid in the launch of start-ups. It is important that the extra curricular activities are not just an academic exercise; rather they should have a serious interest in launching a new venture. The closer the extra curricular activities get students to the flames of “real world experience” the more fit they will be for survival. Thus, priorities for entrepreneurship program activities include alumni tracking, internships, business plan competitions, networking opportunities, and incubators. Each of the resources used in this study are looked at in more detail in the following sections and the resource in its entirety is available from the authors.
Success Magazine conducts an annual study in collaboration with Erdos and Morgan, an independent research firm located in New York City to rank the “Top 50” entrepreneurship programs. Success sent letters to more than 250 colleges and universities asking them to participate in their online survey. Once all the responses were scored, and averaged into four major topic areas of comparison: Caliber of Candidates, 15 percent; Curriculum, 25 percent; Faculty, 25 percent; Support for Students, 15 percent; and Overall Program, 20 percent. The schools were then ranked based on the final total weighted score. In considering what entrepreneurial activities the “Top 50” programs offer in addition to the coursework, we found the development of an Entrepreneurship Club and Business Plan Competition to be essential features with slightly more than half of the programs offering these two activities. The other significant activities include Incubators for start-ups, a strong Alumni Program, a Lecture Series, and Internships with local small firms and start-ups. The listing of outside activities and the percent of institutions engaging in them can be referenced in Table 4. While many readers are familiar with the Success “Top 50”, it can be difficult to gain access to information about the programs. However, to ease this process, a listing of the “Top 50” programs with contact information for the program can be obtained from the authors. Table 4: Developmental Activities
Within the qualitative survey four primary activities outside of the course curriculum emerged among the participating schools as important in the development of entrepreneurs. The first area of focus is the development of a strong alumni program. Overall responses indicate that the key aspects for alumni involvement include inviting them to be guest speakers, to serve as mentors, to be on an advisory board, or to provide internships for current students. In addition, entrepreneurial clubs serve as a good link to provide continuity for alumni programs as they often provide opportunities for alumni involvement. Also of importance is that institutions with strong alumni programs have substantial donations to the program by its alumni allowing for further development of the entrepreneurship program. The second outside activity that emerged as important in developing a “great” program is the use of business plan competitions. The competition allows for the integration of subjects, and forces students to look at the whole instead of just the parts. It is also useful because it puts the plan under stress and typically will kill a bad idea before students take the idea to market. The competitions are good because it puts the students ideas through the fire, and the closer the students get to the actual experience the better the learning process. The third aspect of a “great” program’s outside developmental activities involves networking. Business survival is about networking in order to understand the risks and rules within a given sector, and to gain the professional help that is needed to survive. “Great” entrepreneurship programs have networks that bring the real world to the classroom by putting students in contact with CPAs, lawyers, public relations firms, and insurance brokers to educate them about what they can do for them, and possibly aid in the eventual launch of a new business. Thus, it is important that entrepreneurship programs provide students with links to alumni and local professionals. The final outside developmental activity that is important in an entrepreneurship program is a university incubator. Incubators provide students with a real world experience. They also serve to build momentum and excitement in the program while serving as a source of speakers, examples of successes and failures, role models for current students, and “live” experience. The best form is a not for profit, no equity incubator via business plan and grant. This serves to eliminate many of the problems that can be associated with who has the rights to business profits once the business is successfully launched. A major problem discovered during the course of the qualitative survey is how to spread entrepreneurship within the university community. The difficulty lies in getting other departments to give up credit hours for a faculty member from another department to teach entrepreneurship, which many do not view as being a real subject. In order to break down these walls it is recommended that entrepreneurship programs start with a speaker series of successful entrepreneurs. This should be an open house event that is widely advertised on campus. It is suggested that the Entrepreneurs Club made up of both students from across the campus and alumni who have a strong interest in this subject organize this series. The series could be followed up with an opportunity plan (a summary business plan competition that concentrates on the opportunity itself rather than the full financial evaluation required of most business plan competitions). Good opportunities developed through the opportunity plan would then be further developed through a full business plan workshop. Another promising recommendation is to host faculty/staff boot camps or workshops that educate the faculty and staff from other departments on start-ups. This can also be used to educate research faculty on issues dealing with technology commercialization which is now often required as a part of a research grant application. The purpose of the workshops is to stimulate interest in the subject of entrepreneurship and to encourage faculty to think about the value of introducing a subject on entrepreneurship to their own students. Thus, the priorities for outside developmental activities from the qualitative survey include aggressive tracking of alumni, finding successful entrepreneurs from other degree programs, building an area wide network of successful entrepreneurs, linking with the professional community, reviewing the subject content and subjects offered, and marketing the program aggressively.
The information in the National Survey demonstrates similar findings that support McKaskill’s qualitative survey. The factors for excellence shown here clearly indicate that external support through endowments, alliances with government agencies such as the small business development center, internships to reach out to the community, and alumni tracking are key elements for developing a leading entrepreneurship program. At the time of the survey there were 25 endowed entrepreneurship centers, eight endowed professors and 17endowed chairs. In regards to local involvement 73 percent of the respondents indicated they provide internship opportunities with local small companies, and 72 percent have partnerships with government agencies. Finally, 42 percent of the institutions actively track their alumni.
Conclusions and Recommendations The goal of this project is to aid universities in developing a “great” entrepreneurship program. There are several levels of entrepreneurship programs, and it is important to address each level, because a university interested in building an entrepreneurship program will likely have to start at the ground floor, while others are wanting to take the next step in becoming a top 50 program. The first level would be a minimalist approach in which a core program is developed that consists of one to five courses in entrepreneurship. Based on our results, the six foundation courses that should be included are New Venture Financing, Business Plan Writing, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Small Business Management, New Venture Growth Strategies, and Consulting. Once the core program is established the program can then progress to providing a concentration or major in which the second level of courses become important. These courses include Family Issues, Technology Development, Entrepreneurship and eCommerce, Business Plans II, International Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurship Marketing. The third level of courses appear to represent personal interests in entrepreneurship and are recommended where the course will help achieve the universities mission. These courses address issues such as negotiations, law, and creativity. A key aspect of developing an entrepreneurship program is involvement, which is where the activities of an entrepreneurship program become important. It is important for students to go out and do things through assignments that involve risk, which will bring life into the program and create a sense of excitement because students have the opportunity to actually be a part of the entrepreneurial process as opposed to just studying about it. Thus, priorities for entrepreneurship program activities include internships, business plan competitions, networking opportunities, and incubators in which the students are actively putting their knowledge to work in actual entrepreneurial environments. The final key area of the activities aspect of a program is alumni tracking so the program can tap into their alumni for success stories, mentors, and program development. In conclusion, every program has to begin somewhere, which may be simply to start with an introductory course. The key thing is to start. Once the program begins it will generate interest and enthusiasm, which will provide evidence to critics that the program can be expanded. The recommendation of using a faculty boot camp to educate other faculty about entrepreneurship and to expand the program throughout the university to include engineering and technology departments is a great way to generate enthusiasm for the program through increased awareness. This process had been successfully used at several Universities visited for the qualitative survey in the early part of 2001. Future work should consider the differences in developing entrepreneurship programs for MBAs versus undergraduates and also the differences in programs that are focused on corporate entrepreneurs versus those focused on new venture initiation. One thing is for certain, and that is entrepreneurship programs are growing at a rapid rate, and it is important for schools to strive to adapt the elements of a great entrepreneurship program based on their institutions stated objectives. This paper should serve as a starting point in facilitating discussion and development of entrepreneurship programs and lead to more comprehensive work in the area through joint endeavors among interested researchers. The information within this study should serve as a helpful launching point in that endeavor.
Babson College. 2000. The eight essentials of entrepreneurship. Retrieved from http://www2.babson.edu/babson/babsoneshipp.nsf/Public/E3 Benson, G. L. 1992. Thoughts of an entrepreneurship chairholder model entrepreneurship curriculum. Journal of Applied Business Research, Winter: 140-147. Charney, A. & Libecap, G. D. 2000. Insights: A Kauffman research series: 1-8. Kansas City, MO: Kauffman Center. Chia, R. 1996. Teaching paradigm shifting in management education: University business schools and the entrepreneurial imagination. Journal of Management Studies, 33(4): 409-428. Gibb, A. A. 1993. The enterprise culture and education. International Small Business Journal, 11(3): 11-34. Gorman, G., Hanlon, D., & King, W. Some research perspectives on entrepreneurship education, enterprise education and education for small business management: A ten-year literature review. International Small Business Journal, 15(3): 56-77. Hills, G. E. 1988. Variations in university entrepreneurship education: An empirical study of an evolving field. Journal of Business Venturing, 3: 109-122. Hood, J. N. & Young, J. E. 1993. Entrepreneurship's requisite areas of development: A survey of top executives in entrepreneurial firms. Journal of Business Venturing, 8: 115-135. McMullan, W. E. & Long, W. A. 1987. Entrepreneurship education in the nineties. Journal of Business Venturing, 2: 261-275. Plaschka, G. R. & Welsch, H. P. 1990. Emerging structures in entrepreneurship education: Curricular designs and strategies. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Spring: 55-70. Reynolds, P. D., Hay, M., Bygrave, W. D., Camp, S. M., & Autio, E. 2000. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: 2000 Executive Report. Babson College, Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, London Business School. Rushing, F. W. 1990. Entrepreneurship and education. In C.A. Kent (Ed.), Entrepreneurship education: Current developments, future directions (pp. 29-40). Westport, CT: Quorum Books. Sexton, D. L. & Bowman-Upton, N. 1987. Evaluation of an innovative approach to teaching entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business Management, 25(1): 35-43. Thomas, A. S. & Mueller, S. L. 2000. A case for comparative entrepreneurship: Assessing the relevance of culture. Journal of International Business Studies, 31(2): 287-301. Farrell, K. 1994. Why B-schools embrace entrepreneurs. Venture, 6(4): 60-63. Price, C., & Monroe, S. 1992. Educational training for women and minority entrepreneurs positively impacts venture growth and development. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, Babson College: Wellesley, MA, pp216-230. Vesper, K. H., & Gartner, W. B. 1997. Measuring progress in entrepreneurship education. Journal of Business Venturing, 12(5), 403-421.
Company or Institution: Culverhouse College
of Commerce and Business Administration
Company or Institution: Australian Graduate
School of Entrepreneurship
Company or Institution: The George Washington
University
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© Tom McKaskill 2007
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