Entrepreneurship is the engine for American economic growth. Although sometimes a hindrance, higher education can play an important role in developing individuals that become wildly successful entrepreneurs.
The next two sections detail the top 10 undergraduate programs and the top 10 MBA programs for entrepreneurship. Before looking, can you guess which universities show up on top? Would you guess that most of the top 10 universities are Ivy League? Are most American universities? Take your guess now because the results follow.
Top 10 Undergraduate Programs
The following figure has the top 10 undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship. Drum roll please. The top university for developing successful founders is Stanford University. According to data out of financial data provider Pitchbook, a whopping 1,288 founders attended Stanford University.
In second place is another California school – the University of California, Berkeley. The State of California college produced an amazing 1,235 founders.
Third place belongs to the first Ivy League college on the list – Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As of writing, MIT had 1,012 success founders.
Fourth place belongs to the king of Ivy League schools – Harvard University. Coming out of the bleeding red university were 987 founders.
Rounding out the top 5 undergraduate programs is the University of Pennsylvania. UPenn produced 910 successful founders.
Other universities in the top 10 (the founder count is in parentheses) include Cornell University (796), University of Michigan (745), Tel Aviv University (694), the University of Texas (682), and the University of Illinois (563).
Top 10 MBA Programs
This section focuses attention on the top 10 MBA programs for developing success entrepreneurs. Would you guess that the same ranking for undergraduate programs would show up for graduate programs? Perhaps some universities have better MBA programs for producing founders than do their undergraduate programs? Here’s a look.
Fascinatingly, although not completely surprising, the top university according to the number of founders companies is Harvard University. The Ivy League school has 1,446 founders that claim Harvard University as the school where they earned their MBA.
In second place is Stanford University. Stanford counts 933 founders as graduates from its MBA program. Overall, Stanford comes out quite good in both lists, placing first in its undergraduate program and second for its MBA program.
In third place is the University of Pennsylvania with 792 founders.
Rounding out the top 5 are MIT (538 founders) and Northwestern University (529 founders).
The other members of the top 10 include (founders count is in parentheses) INSEAD (527), Columbia University (508), University of Chicago (494), the University of California, Berkeley (417), and the University of California, Los Angeles (302).
Conclusion
In a fascinating look at success entrepreneurs, some universities produce some very success business founders. The most successful undergraduate school for business founders is Stanford University, while the top ranking for MBA programs goes to Harvard University. May entrepreneurship continue to be an important component of the American economy.
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