Do Entrepreneurs Need College?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a minor case that the two help each other in his closing remarks on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday. Seeking to reassure Americans that our economy will recover, he focused on America's long-term economic advantages. Bernanke said:

We have the best technologies. We have-- great universities. We have entrepreneurs. I just have every confidence that as we get through this crisis, that our economy will begin to grow again, and it will remain-- the most powerful and dynamic economy in the world.

Bernanke's comments don't equate universities with entrepreneurialism directly but I cannot help but think that he mentioned the two together without any reason. Yet colleges may not be the best mechanism for training entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneur magazine, provides yearly rankings of the top fifty colleges for undergraduate and graduate programs for aspiring entrepreneurs. I've provided the top ten undergraduate schools below

Undergraduate
1. University of Houston
2. Babson College
3. Drexel University
4. University of Dayton
5. University of Arizona
6. Temple University
7. DePaul University
8. University of Oklahoma
9. University of Southern California
10. Chapman University

Some of those programs like Drexel, DePaul, and Temple have broad undergraduate audiences. Babson College , a small college in Massachusetts, adversities itself as a place for entrepreneurs.
There is a long tradition of American entrepreneurs , like Walt Disney and Henry Ford, who succeeded without attending college (in fact Disney) was a high school dropout. More recently technology leaders like Michael Dell and Bill Gates both began but dropped out of college to pursue successful business ventures.

None of this is to say that entrepreneurs don't benefit from college. Some of the early research on the subject (see Merrill Douglass, "Relating Education to Entrepreneurial Success", Business Horizons, 1976--sorry firewalled), indicates that while entrepreneurs are often more highly educated than the general population, their level of education did don contribute to their business success. This included finding that MBA students, who are trained to run businesses, are not consistently more successful entrepreneurs.

The benefits of college for aspiring entrepreneurs may rest more in gaining access to other bright young people willing to take business risks, through social networks and college groups aimed at entrepreneurs rather than benefits from the classroom experience.