Business Schools Changing Approach to Entrepreneurial Education

According to a recent Inc. magazine article, Rise of the Entrepreneurial Class, business schools are shifting their educational curriculum more and more towards entrepreneurship.

In the early 1980s, only 300 universities in the U.S. offered courses in small business and entrepreneurships, according to a survey released in June by the Indiana University's Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Today, there are over 2,200 courses available at over 1,600 schools nationwide, complete with 277 endowed faculty positions, 44 academic journals, and nearly 150 research centers, the survey found.

While the statistics are intriguing and encouraging, I thought this quote from Mark Rice, a dean at Babson College, one of the world's top entrepreneurship programs, really hit the mark:

"By and large, business schools have long had the mentality that they're training managers for big established firms," Rice said. "But if you ignore new product and market development you're missing the boat."

While entrepreneurship certainly doesn't require a business school education, apparently it does help:

[A]n entrepreneurship education increased the chances of graduates owning their own businesses by 11%, relative to those in non-entrepreneurial programs. What's more, the study also offered strong evidence that entrepreneurship education in general fueled risk-taking, innovation and the formation of new ventures, while contributing to the growth of smaller firms and technology transfers.

It also tends to boost graduates' income and job satisfaction.

On the other hand, is business school really the best way to learn entrepreneurship? Will it really make you more money in the long run? As my friend Paulie Sabol points out, it might actually cost you money in the long run to go to business school rather than just going ahead and starting and investing the expense of business school wisely in something else.