The original charter of Rice University, drafted in 1891, established a school here dedicated to the advancement of literature, science and art. These days, Rice seems equally dedicated to the advancement of the next Mark Zuckerberg.
The university offers academic courses in entrepreneurship strategy and financing, extracurricular startup workshops and a summer programme for students seeking to start companies.
In August, Rice announced a multimillion-dollar “entrepreneurship initiative” to develop more courses and programmes in the subject. And administrators say they hope to erect an entrepreneurial centre to house classes and services supporting student projects.
Ten years ago, it may have sufficed for colleges and universities like Rice to offer a few entrepreneurship courses, startup workshops and clubs. But now hundreds of thousands of undergraduates, driven by a sullen job market and inspired by billion-dollar success narratives from Silicon Valley, expect universities to teach them how to convert their ideas into big businesses or non-profit ventures.
As a result, colleges across the United States — and elite institutions in particular — have become engaged in an innovation arms race. Universities are expanding academic programs at a breakneck pace and constructing startup centres. Harvard opened an Innovation Lab in 2011 that has helped start more than 75 companies; last year, New York University founded a campus entrepreneurs’ lab; this year, Northwestern University opened a student startup centre, The Garage.
“Today’s students are hungry to make an impact, and we have to be responsive,” said Gordon Jones, the dean of a new College of Innovation and Design at Boise State University in Idaho and the former director of Harvard’s Innovation Lab. “Certainly, having a space is the minimum price of entry.”
Yet campus entrepreneurship fever is encountering skepticism among some academics, who say that, at their most superficial, startup programs can lack rigor and a moral backbone.
Even a few entrepreneurship educators say that some colleges and universities are simply parroting an “innovate and disrupt” Silicon Valley mindset and promoting narrow skill sets — like how to interview potential customers or pitch to possible investors — without encouraging students to tackle more complex societal problems.
Some universities that already have entrepreneurship programmes are redoubling their efforts.
Princeton, for instance, offers a variety of entrepreneurship courses. But, in a report released in May, a university advisory committee concluded that Princeton had fallen behind competing schools that had made “major upgrades” to their programs.
Among other issues, the report said, Princeton had allotted “only 1,500 square feet” for student incubator and accelerator programmes, “whereas Cornell has 3,64,000; Penn 2,00,000; Berkeley 1,08,000; Harvard 30,000; Stanford 12,000; Yale 7,700; NYU 6,000; and Columbia 5,000.”
In November, Princeton celebrated the opening of a 10,000-square-foot Entrepreneurial Hub near campus. The university also is starting a summer internship program in New York City so that students can spend time at young companies. Mung Chiang, the director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton, said the university wanted to help students, faculty and alumni become more entrepreneurial in business, government, and non-profit work.
The growth trajectory of campus entrepreneurship is clear, administrators say, though comparable data is somewhat difficult to find. In 1985, college campuses in the United States offered only about 250 courses in entrepreneurship, according to a recent report. In 2013, more than 400,000 students were taking such courses, the report said.
The prospect of starting the next Snapchat or Instagram is one attraction for students. But the economy is also partly responsible for the trend. In a tight job market, where the risk of layoffs often looms and young adults say they expect to change employers every few years, some undergraduates are signing up for startup training in the hope of acquiring self-employment skills.“To be honest, our generation is no longer interested in doing one thing for the rest of our lives,” said Mijin Han, a senior at Rice with an English major and a business minor focused on entrepreneurship. “Our generation is interested in learning different things, and, if the environment does not provide it, we want to jump out and take a risk.”
— New York Times News Service
