Entrepreneurship Education Without Boundaries: Kauffman Campuses Seek to Make Entrepreneurship Education a College-Wide Experience
The Kauffman Foundation's Kauffman Campuses initiative aims to transform the way colleges and universities prepare students for success in the American economy. The program was launched in December 2003, when eight universities were awarded up to $5 million each to make entrepreneurship education available across their campuses, enabling any student, regardless of field of study, to access entrepreneurial training.
The eight inaugural Kauffman Campuses are a diverse group, including two smaller universities (the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, which is a research intensive school, and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, a liberal arts university); three universities with predominantly minority enrollments (Howard University in Washington DC, Florida International University in Miami, and the University of Texas at El Paso); and three larger universities (Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
As part of the initiative's matching funds requirement, the Kauffman Campuses schools have pledged a three-to-one match, which, combined with the Kauffman grants, is directing a minimum of $100 million for the creation of new interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education programs in American higher education.
The Next Generation of Kauffman Campuses
In December of 2006, a second set of universities were selected to receive grants and make entrepreneurship a pan-campus experience. The second round of the Kauffman Campuses initiative features a total of $19.5 million in grants to six U.S. universities that pledged to make entrepreneurship education a campus-wide opportunity. With matching grants totaling more than $200 million, the effort promises to continue to transform the way entrepreneurship education is taught in the nation’s colleges and universities. The universities selected were: Arizona State University, Georgetown University, Purdue University, Syracuse University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
A Culture of Entrepreneurship
While entrepreneurship programs traditionally have been the domain of the business school, Kauffman Campuses recipients are developing an astonishing variety of programs aimed at instilling the spirit and skills of entrepreneurial studies into college life. Some universities have chosen to create minor degree programs, offer introductory courses for incoming freshmen, expand the role of technology transfer, or build or expand community-based businesses that benefit students and surrounding communities. Some are broadening existing entrepreneurial activities on liberal arts campuses as well as on technology-oriented campuses. Others are focused on developing Hispanic-American entrepreneurship, African-American entrepreneurship, and cross-cultural business creation. All involve faculty and students from a variety of academic disciplines outside the conventional business curriculum.
