By Nick Dyess, News Correspondent
Northeastern’s entrepreneurship program was ranked 10th in the nation in the most recent edition of the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine, after being ranked 13th in 2012.
The review released their annual lists of the top 25 undergraduate and top 25 graduate entrepreneurship schools in the nation on Sept. 19.
The ranking is determined by a survey given to school officials covering topics such as their school’s level of commitment to entrepreneurship, amount of faculty and students involved and each school’s support for college-sponsored entrepreneurial studies, projects and grants.
“I am thrilled to be ranked in the top ten undergraduate entrepreneurship programs,” College of Business Administration Dean Hugh Courtney said. “I think it provides external validation to the tremendous progress Northeastern is making in building our entrepreneurship education ecosystem on campus.”
Over the years, Northeastern has worked to build a complex and successful entrepreneurship educational system, according to entrepreneurship professor Marc Meyer.
“No other university has a system like ours, one that is integrated and which is truly campus-wide,” Meyer said. “Northeastern has developed a system of entrepreneurship education that is based on educate, incubate and launch.”
According to Meyer, there are a variety of specific entrepreneurship courses aimed at educating undergraduates, graduates and alumni. In addition, these students have access to approximately 100 entrepreneurship co-op jobs in early stage companies.
Meyers added that the nationally recognized Inter-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship Accelerator, a student-run on-campus venture accelerator, incubates growing entrepreneur students. The accelerator provides coaching, mentoring, funding and business planning services with MBA-type coaches, alumni mentors and Northeastern’s entrepreneurship faculty. The Entrepreneur in Residence is also available to personally help the most promising of ventures raise initial financing from angel and venture capital investors, according to Meyer.
Northeastern’s IDEA and Entrepreneurial Club are some of the most successful in the country, as the Entrepreneurial Club was recently ranked sixth in the world by FledgeWing, an online community for rising entrepreneurial students, and was recognized along with IDEA as Massachusetts’ top contributors to innovation within higher education.
“The Entrepreneurs Club’s role is to help those interested in learning and developing an entrepreneurial mindset,” said Entrepreneurs Club President Casey Hogan. “We have a number of programs ranging from entrepreneurial marketing to working with a startup to help students get their feet wet in entrepreneurship.”
Hogan added that once students find they’re ready to start their own ventures, they can participate in the club’s Husky Startup Challenge that “allows them to flesh their idea out into a real business.” From there, these students can move on to IDEA.
“Since 2009, [IDEA] has worked with over 300 concepts to date, launched 12 companies and distributed just short of $500,000 in non-equity Gap Funding grants to our ventures,” IDEA Chief Executive Officer Max Kaye said. “Top 10 definitely has a nice ring to it … I’m glad the university is getting recognized for all the work being done on the ground here by faculty and students alike.”
While proud of the high ranking, Northeastern administration and students are not content with 10th.
“I am not satisfied with being ranked 10th,” Courtney said. “We can surely do much better given the entrepreneurial nature of our students, faculty, staff and alumni. We’re focused on moving up.”
In the spirit of improving, Meyer expressed that exciting developments are continuing to be made within the program.
“On the education front, we are launching a new Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Minor this year that includes hands-on design and build-it courses from different colleges, plus innovation, marketing and business planning courses,” Meyer said. “We are also launching a special entrepreneurship track in the honors program.”
In addition, Meyer said Northeastern launched its first entrepreneurship bootcamp for alumni. So far, the bootcamp has been a success as it was sold out two weeks after its announcement.
