Reviewing Entrepreneurship Education

Paul Brown did a good review of various entrepreneurship programs last week in his story The Right Places to Learn Entrepreneurship in the New York Times. He quotes some of the highlights from Fortune Small Business, including recommended lists for MBA, online, undergrad, executive courses, family business, and social entrepreneurs.

These are good lists and offering good food for thought, but lists are lists. Their tires need kicking. For example, the beyondpinstripes.org list of green MBA programs I cited last month has Stanford and Notre Dame at the top of its US schools, but FSB leaves Notre Dame out of its social entrepreneurship lists. Yes, I’m biased. After a couple of days with Notre Dame’s social entrepreneurship program last week, I mistrust a list of social entrepreneurship schools that doesn’t include that one.

For the record, here’s Brown’s summary from the NY Times:

The best places for  learning online were Boston University, the University of Houston at Victoria, the University of Wyoming, and Western Carolina University.

For graduate school, the top places were Babson, Harvard, Indiana University, M.I.T., Stanford, Syracuse, the University of Arizona, University of California at Berkeley, the University of California – Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Pennsylvania.

The top choices for executive education were Babson, Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin.

And for family business, the best places were Babson, Baylor, Kennesaw State University, Loyola of Chicago, Northwestern and the University of Texas at El Paso.

The FSB site also has some interesting additional insight on entrepreneurship education, including Is it smart to go to school for entrepreneurship, which features stories  from nine entrepreneurs.