University Entrepreneurship – Right Track?

Ever since college dropouts Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started their trillion dollar legendary ventures, universities and colleges have strived to teach entrepreneurship – trying to capture this lightning in a bottle.

During the past 25 years, nearly every one of 7,000 or so U.S. colleges have some sort of entrepreneurship program – from basic business-building courses to expansive programs that include accelerators, incubators and venture capital funds for students.  But it is working?  It still seems as if the most prominent young entrepreneurs either dropped out of college, or never went to college at all.
Are colleges on the right track with promoting entrepreneurship?  A few recent articles use some data to get to the heart of the matter.  One article asks “Are Universities Missing A Golden Opportunity To Develop Better Entrepreneurs?”
The most poignant fact is that, while many colleges teach about writing business plans in order to attract venture capital, VCs reject about 98-99 percent of entrepreneurs who seek funds from them.  Out of the millions of entrepreneurs starting new companies each year, less than 2,000 get startup funding from venture capitalists – leading another author to ask:  Are Universities Teaching the Wrong Entrepreneurship Process?.  Why focus so much energy on this kind of entrepreneurial training?
 
Enter a New Wave of Entrepreneurship Education.
You might call it “pragmatic entrepreneurship” – or better yet, as entrepreneurship thought leader Sramana Mitra calls it:  “The Other 99% (of Entrepreneurs).”   These are the 99% of entrepreneurs who will be successful without the help of venture capital.  They will build successful companies that will have customers and revenues, as opposed to investors and “exits”.   The skillsets are different when you are not chasing the windmills of Sand Hill Road.  Powerpoint pitches matter less than hands on business building skills.  The fundamentals matter now more than ever.  Call it new; Call it old; Call it retro.  It’s training and education for “Main Street” Entrepreneur.
Cogswell Polytechnical College  is leading this new wave of entrepreneurial education:   Combining the intensity and pace of Silicon Valley, while imparting the skills required to start, build and run real sustainable companies – the kind that produce products and services, and attract customers and revenues.
Stay tuned for 2 major new programs from Cogswell leading this new wave of entrepreneurship education.