Financial Times 2018 Top MBA Programs for Entrepreneurship
Are you itching to start your own company and wondering which business schools would best help you achieve that dream? Entrepreneurship is a super popular course of study at today’s b-schools. As someone who has started more than one successful company, I can attest that I leveraged a lot of my MBA classes and resources into my business ventures.
Granted, the best programs acknowledge that they don’t actually create entrepreneurs—they merely nurture innate ability. More than 1 in 10 business school alumni are self-employed, and the longer they’ve been out of business school the more likely they are to have taken an entrepreneurial career path, previous Graduate Management Admission Council surveys have shown.
This week, The Financial Times announced the results of their annual survey of the top entrepreneurship programs. These are the programs that offer a broad range of courses in entrepreneurship, as well as significant opportunities for networking with established entrepreneurs, launching start-ups, and developing the skills needed to start successful businesses. The FT surveys alumni three years after completing their MBA.
Top 10 Global MBA Programs for Entrepreneurship
- Stanford Graduate School of Business (US)
- Babson College: F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business (US)
- Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (US)
- Lancaster University Management School (UK)
- City University: Cass Business School (UK)
- WHU Beisheim School of Management (Germany)
- IMD (Switzerland)
- Oxford Said Business School (UK)
- Harvard Business School (US)
- Cambridge Judge Business School (UK)
The FT ranking methodology to determine the top schools for entrepreneurship included looking at the number of graduates who started a company upon earning their MBA, the percentage of female entrepreneurs, and the extent to which the school or the school’s alumni network helped fund the creation of new ventures. These combined factors ultimately decided where a school would land on the ranking list.
Interestingly, top-ranking Stanford GSB recorded a significant drop in the number of students starting a business in the three years after graduation. It went from 36% in 2017 down to 22% this year. A similar dip occurred among graduates from the No. 2 ranked Babson College, where the numbers of grads starting their own companies went from 52% in 2017 to 37% this year.
These waning numbers don’t represent a lack of entrepreneurial interest among graduates, however. “Behind these figures there are signs that MBA students are just as interested in being entrepreneurial as in previous years, but do not see the need to give up a full-time job offer to start a business,” the FT reports.
A simple reason for graduates taking a salaried position straight out of business school? Student loan bills to pay.
Follow the link see the FT’s list of the top 50 schools for entrepreneurship.
