In 1970, only 16 business schools in the U.S. offered entrepreneurship classes. Today, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, more than 2,000 colleges and universities offer at least one entrepreneurship course.

One reason for the boom is the change in the U.S. economy. Thirty years ago, most college students could expect to collect their degrees, join a corporation and work their way up the ladder until retirement. Today’s students not only have seen their parents and grandparents downsized or outsourced, but also have experienced exponential changes in technology in their short lifetimes.

"Students are demanding [entrepreneurship courses] because they have an intuitive feeling that it's a fast-changing world and they need to know entrepreneurship," says Bruce Gjovig, director of the Center for Innovation at the University of North Dakota.

Business incubation programs, whether campus-sponsored or independent, can be an important part of any campus entrepreneurship initiative, says Marge Smelstor, vice president for Kauffman Campuses and Higher Education Programs with the Kauffman Foundation. "Incubators tend not to be layered with bureaucratic impediments, so they have a freedom and neutrality that laboratories and university departments just plain don't have," she says. 

While incubating student businesses and hiring student interns are obvious roles, incubation programs can do more to promote campus entrepreneurship. Last year, Gjovig's program established the Dakota Venture Group, the only student-run venture capital fund in the United States. The fund received initial capitalization through a grant from the Dakota Foundation, which fosters social entrepreneurship in North Dakota and New Mexico; other sponsors include a bank, an insurance executive and the Center for Innovation. 

Another way incubation programs can get involved with campus entrepreneurship programs is to provide expertise. Barbara Hayde, president of the Entrepreneurs Center in Dayton, Ohio, is a regular guest speaker for entrepreneurship classes at the University of Dayton. "I feel fortunate that I get to take part in it," she says. "It's fostering entrepreneurship at a very early age, and they get the bug." 

In exchange for their expertise, incubation programs may get better-prepared clients. Lisa Roberts, director of Business, Industry & Entrepreneurship at Cowley College in Arkansas City, Kan., says clients who have taken entrepreneurship classes at Cowley are more likely to meet their fiscal projections and make good human resources decisions, and less likely to miss payments or run into trouble with vendors or customers, than those without formal schooling in entrepreneurship.

"Many have commented that they’ve become more confident in their decision making," Roberts says. "They often directly attribute this to what and how we teach, coach and train in our [entrepreneurship] programs."

This article can also be found in the November 2007 issue (Volume 2, Issue 11) of NBIA Insights, A monthly publication of the national business incubator association.