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Mashable
15 Colleges With Powerhouse Entrepreneurship Programs
The nation’s top entrepreneurs don’t come from one place — not one Ivy, one city or one incubator. Sure, schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University have a reputation for churning out revolutionary ideas and battle-tested founders, but top-flight companies sprout from universities and entrepreneurship programs all across the country.
Case in point: Jan Koum. the co-founder of mobile messaging company WhatsApp. which recently sold to Facebook for $16 billion. isn’t an Ivy League MBA. Instead, he got his bachelor’s from San Jose State University.
To get a better feel for the college entrepreneurship landscape today, Mashable parsed through graduate and undergraduate rankings and syllabi to root out the top universities for entrepreneurship in the U.S.
The rankings we scoped judge schools on their faculty, course offerings, teaching principles and extracurriculars, and also on how many businesses they’ve helped launch and how many of those companies are still around.
The following schools are sorted alphabetically; their order does not reflect a ranking.
1. Babson College
A group of Babson students
Business school: Babson College (Babson only offers business programs)
Entrepreneurship center: Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship
Year center opened: 1999
Program: Undergraduate and graduate courses
Course sampling: “Raising Money — VC, Angels Incubators” (undergraduate) and “Enterprise 2.0: Building Social Networks” (graduate)
Notable alumni: Michael Bastian (founder, Michael Bastian ), Arthur Blank (co-founder, Home Depot ), Bob Davis (founder, Lycos Inc. ) and Alberto Perlman (co-founder, Zumba )
2. Brigham Young University
Dell Inc. CEO Kevin Rollins
Image: Contributor/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Business School: Marriott School of Management
Entrepreneurship center: Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship Technology
Year center opened: 2003
Program: Undergraduate and graduate courses
Course sampling: “Fundamentals of Intellectual Property” (undergraduate) and “Mobile Application Development” (undergraduate and graduate)
Notable alumni: Dave Bateman and Ben Zimmer (founders, Property Solutions International ) and Jonathan C. Coon (co-founder, 1-800 Contacts )
3. University of California, Berkeley
Indiegogo co-founders Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell
Business school: Haas School of Business
Entrepreneurship center: Lester Center for Entrepreneurship
Year center opened: 1991
Program: Undergraduate and graduate courses
Course sampling: “Opportunity Recognition: Technology and Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley” (graduate)
Notable alumni: Gordon Moore (co-founder, Intel ), Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell (founders, Indiegogo ), Marc Tarpenning (co-founder, Tesla Motors ) and Steve Wozniak (co-founder, Apple )
4. University of Chicago
GrubHub co-founder Matt Maloney
Image: Contributor/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Kenan-Flagler students work in the business school’s Capital Markets Lab
Image: University of North Carolina
Business school: Kenan-Flagler Business School
Entrepreneurship center: Kenan-Flagler Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Year center opened: 1998
Program: Graduate and undergraduate
Course sampling: “Designing and Protecting Your Startup” (graduate) and “Social Entrepreneurship Through Microfinance” (undergraduate)
Notable alumni: Ryan Allis (co-founder, iContact ) and Jason Kilar (founder, Hulu )
10. University of Pennsylvania
Warby Parker co-founders David Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal
Image: Warby Parker
Business school: Wharton School
Entrepreneurship center: Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center
Year center opened: 1973 (named for Snider in 1985)
Program: Graduate and undergraduate
Course sampling: “Building Human Assets in Entrepreneurial Ventures” (graduate) and “Entrepreneurial Marketing” (undergraduate)
Notable alumni: Neil Blumenthal, David Gilboa, Andrew Hunt, Jeffrey Raider (founders, Warby Parker ), Leonard Bosack (co-founder, Cisco Systems ), Josh Kopelman (founder, Half.com ), Cyrus Massoumi (founder, ZocDoc ) and Elon Musk (co-founder, PayPal and co-founder, Tesla Motors )
11. Princeton University
Vikram Pansare, who founded Sphera Materials, presents at the Keller Center Innovation Forum.
Image: Princeton University
Business school: Princeton does not have a business school, but it has entrepreneurship programs
Entrepreneurship center: The Keller Center
Year centered opened: 2005
Program: Undergraduate courses
Course sampling: “Special Topics in Entrepreneurship: Developing Commercially Viable Technologies”
Notable alumni: Jeff Bezos (founder, Amazon ) and Frank Moss (co-founder, Bluefin Labs )
12. University of Southern California
A Pinkberry store in Dubai. Pinkberry was founded by USC alum Shelly Hwang
Business school: Marshall School of Business
Entrepreneurship center: Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Year center opened: 1971
Program: Undergraduate and graduate courses
Course sampling: “The Digital Startup Launchpad” (undergraduate) and “Investing in New Ventures” (graduate)
Notable alumni: Marc Benioff (founder, Salesforce.com ), Scott Cook (co-founder, Intuit ), Shelly Hwang (co-founder, Pinkberry ), Paul Orfalea (founder, Kinko’s ) and Andrew Viterbi (co-founder, Qualcomm )
13. Stanford University
Google co-founder Sergey Brin
Image: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Business school: Stanford Graduate School of Business
Entrepreneurship center: Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Year center opened: 1996
Program: Undergraduate and graduate courses
Course sampling: “The Spirit of Entrepreneurship” (undergraduate) and “Entrepreneur Leader-Identity Development: A Critical-Incident Approach” (graduate)
Notable alumni: Brian Acton (co-founder, WhatsApp ), Rich Barton (founder, Expedia.com and founder, Zillow.com ), Sergey Brin (co-founder, Google ), Joe Coulombe (founder, Trader Joe’s ), Reed Hastings (founder, Netflix ), Reid Hoffman (founder, LinkedIn ), William Hewlett and David Packard (founders, Hewlett Packard ), Jawed Karim (co-founder, YouTube ), Kevin Systrom (co-founder, Instagram ) and Tim Westergren (co-founder, Pandora )
14. University of Texas, Austin
Tito’s Vodka, founded by UT alum Burt Butler Beveridge II