Can you learn to be an entrepreneur? It's a common question in entrepreneurship circles. After all, an entrepreneur is a little of everything—a visionary, hustler, builder, and boss. Can you learn that stuff in a classroom? The answer is yes and no: You don't have to go to school for it, but doing so can help accelerate your growth and provide you with the fundamentals for entrepreneurial success. Not all elements of entrepreneurship can be found in a book, of course, which is why the best colleges and universities have robust programs that support students' startups and help build the kind of networks that last a lifetime.

Related: Top 50 Best Undergraduate Programs for Entrepreneurs in 2025

So which are the best schools? Entrepreneur has partnered with The Princeton Review for 19 years to answer that question—ranking the top undergraduate and graduate programs for entrepreneurs. This year's survey considered hundreds of colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe, and evaluated them on a multitude of factors—including their programming, their available mentors, and their graduates' success rates in the business world. Read on to see which schools made the grade. (To read more about our methodology, pick up the Dec. 2024 issue of Entrepreneur.)

Rice University

Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Lilie)

Houston, TX

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 23

Tuition: $74,730

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 325

What Sets Us Apart

Rice Innovation Fellows supports grad students with education, dedicated space, personalized mentorship, and non-dilutive funding to transition research from the lab to the real world. Tech Commercialization Lab pairs MBAs with PhDs to create multidisciplinary teams translating cutting-edge technologies into commercial products. Lilie Launchpad provides equity-free funding, development workshops, community/social events, and 1:1 mentorship. Napier Rice Launch Challenge offers $110K in equity-free funding for competitions. Summer Venture Studio immersive accelerator provides $15K per team and mentorship across eight teams, totaling $120K. Venture Capital E-Lab gives students VC experience, meaningful connections, and networking with a partner VC firm. Owlspark supports Rice-affiliated start-ups and small businesses with resources, funding, and space, having served 103 start-ups and over 215 entrepreneurs, raising more than $105M. Rice Alliance hosts the Texas Life Science Forum and Energy Tech Venture Forums, two of the largest energy and life science VC conferences in the region. The Rice Business Plan Competition is the world's richest and largest, with 288 past competitors raising nearly $6.1B and $7.6B in exit dollars. The Rice Alliance also runs programming and activation at the Ion, Houston's innovation hub powered by Rice University.

University of California Los Angeles

Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Los Angeles, CA

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 46

Tuition: $80,926 (in-state); $80,926 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 273

What Sets Us Apart

UCLA Anderson has been recognized as a leader in entrepreneurial education for several decades. We offer a wide and deep range of curriculum offerings that provide our students with management skills suited to an entrepreneurial setting while also helping them to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Our elective offerings cut across the functional areas of management and multiple disciplines. We also offer courses tailored to our location in Los Angeles and industries in our economy, in sectors such as consumer tech, media and entertainment, real estate, social impact, private equity, and health tech.

University of Michigan

Ross School of Business, Zell Lurie Institute; College of Engineering, Center for Entrepreneurship

Ann Arbor, MI

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 91

Tuition: $70,724 (in-state); $75,724 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 504

What Sets Us Apart

An entrepreneurial vision began at the University of Michigan in 1927 with the launch of the first family business class. Since this initial offering, the entrepreneurial curriculum at U-M has grown to include courses in opportunity recognition, commercializing a concept, holistic thinking, team development, venture capital and more. The courses and programs bridge the gap between academia and real-world entrepreneurship by providing immersive opportunities for students to apply their skills in practical settings.

Graduate students experience each step of venture creation. From participating in one of six student-led funds to supporting the launch of a company within our Desai Accelerator program, U-M offers a taste of entrepreneurship for everyone.

While not all students pursue an entrepreneurial career path, U-M recognizes entrepreneurship as a foundational skill set. Our courses cover a broad range of topics, including family business, intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship through acquisition, and new venture creation, inspiring creativity and innovation in students from diverse academic backgrounds.

In addition to our top-ranked programs in business, healthcare, technology, and engineering, U-M offers graduate students the opportunity to work on groundbreaking research projects at an institution with over $1.6 billion in research funding. This combination of academic excellence and real-world experience makes U-M an ideal destination for students exploring entrepreneurship.

Washington University in St. Louis

Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship

St. Louis, MO

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 52

Tuition: $66,586

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 126

What Sets Us Apart

Washington University in St. Louis remains committed to creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship at all levels and across all disciplines. This distinguishes it from its peer institutions that limit entrepreneurship education to the business school. Undergrad students can easily take classes and major or minor in other schools, emphasizing the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. Entrepreneurship classes are highly experiential and collaborative and encourage students to test their concepts. Most courses connect students to the St. Louis community, expanding students' network, such as the newest offering, The League (of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs). This class brings in successful entrepreneurs to guide student founders who are devoting most of their non-class time to launching their ventures. Complementing WashU's rigorous academics, the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship acts as a hub for co-curricular entrepreneurship activities. The Center provides hands-on workshops, a year-long fellowship, student-owned business opportunities, mentors, entrepreneurship competitions, and links to the St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem. Most notably, the majority of opportunities are open to ALL undergrad and grad students, faculty, staff, postdocs, and alumni. It is this blend of curricular and co-curricular; campus and community; creativity and entrepreneurship; unlimited by discipline or school that distinguishes our entrepreneurial offerings.

Babson College

Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship

Babson Park, MA

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 42

Tuition: $71,564

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 403

What Sets Us Apart

Babson teaches Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® across all disciplines. Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship is the hub for resources, including the Butler Launch Pad, which offers coworking space, mentors, workshops, competitions, experts, and seed funding. Our application-based Summer Accelerator, a 10-week intensive accelerator provides advisors, mentors, and programming worth over $200K in-kind services, to accelerate students launching and growing their businesses. Center for Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership (CWEL) empowers and develops women and people of color entrepreneurs and offers both WIN Lab, an application-based 12-week accelerator for female founders, based on milestone planning, competency building, and connections, and Black Women's EL, a 6-month virtual action tank. Social Innovation Lab connects a global, interdisciplinary community of students and mentors dedicated to building social impact ventures. All programs may be taken either for credit or for experience (ungraded). Institute for Family Entrepreneurship fosters connections in the family businesses. It offers a 4-year Amplifier Program for students to work with classmates from other family businesses and connect with parents and owners of family firms, with the goal of launching entrepreneurial ventures in their family businesses. Our 10,000 sq. ft. Weissman Foundry offers a collaboration space, media lab, wood shop, kitchen, and performance space where students can create ideas and prototypes.

University of Washington

Arthur W. Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship

Seattle, WA

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 88

Tuition: $41,127 (in-state); $58,965 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 478

What Sets Us Apart

Graduate students pursuing or interested in entrepreneurship quickly discover a robust slate of programming and opportunities at the University of Washington. Graduate students work next to undergraduate students in the Creative Destruction Lab multi-quarter course to help massively scalable, seed-stage, science-based companies. CDL-Seattle is just the third U.S. offering and is hosted in the Foster School of Business. Graduate students choose post-career opportunities like the 12-month Master of Science in Entrepreneurship to launch their own ideas or something new. The Technology Entrepreneurship Certificate offers students a chance to work with UW inventors on their market-ready applications and apply for fellowships in UW technology ventures or local angel funds. The multi-day digital health workshop and consumer product workshops connect students to real-world professionals to develop their ideas. The Engineering Innovation in Health program brings together undergrads, graduate students, post-docs, and more to give students experience in medical device development and innovation. The Institute of Protein Design (IPD) offers graduate and PhD students a chance to become founders of revolutionary technologies. Collectively, IPD spinouts have raised more than $1 billion, fueling Seattle's biotech boom. Graduate students can also harness real-world start-up investment experience in the 3-quarter Angel Investing course, where real money is invested and earned.

The University of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 60

Tuition: $51,238 (in-state); $56,814 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 98

What Sets Us Apart

The biggest advantage is the robustness of opportunities that a flagship university offers. Sixty formal classes across 19 departments specifically focus on entrepreneurship, and practically every college at UT has touchpoints with the area. There are approximately 50 organizations across UT that focus on all aspects of entrepreneurial endeavors. See our 17-page Guide to UT's Startup Ecosystem.

The ensuing cross-fertilization between MBAs and PhD students in science, engineering, and computer science produces powerful and creative new ideas. Roughly 25% of all nonbusiness graduate entrepreneur students come from our School of Engineering, which is currently No. 7 in the nation (U.S. News). We also have an award-winning incubator, world-famous competitions, and mentorship programs that are campus-wide and well-connected to the business community.

McCombs MSTC Program prepares tech and business professionals for moving technologies from concept to market. Candidates learn to evaluate emerging technologies, identify customers and marketing strategies, develop broad, flexible business plans, build a management team to drive the new venture, devise approaches for securing funding, and manage intellectual property.

University of Virginia

Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Technology

Charlottesville, VA

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 83

Tuition: $75,600 (in-state); $78,600 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 274

What Sets Us Apart

Darden is distinguished by a long-held and deep-pocketed commitment to developing world-class entrepreneurially minded leaders.

Robust Endowment for Entrepreneurship: A $160 million endowment is solely dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Renowned Faculty: Instructors in entrepreneurship and innovation comprise over 25% of all faculty. Darden faculty (particularly Profs. Venkataraman and Saravasthy) helped create entrepreneurship as a discipline unto itself in business academia.

Pool of Entrepreneurial Scholarships: The prestigious Batten Scholarships are the largest named scholarship program at Darden, offering dozens of full scholarships annually to MBAs who exhibit entrepreneurial track records and aspirations.

Abundance of Courses: Darden has dozens of graduate courses directly related to entrepreneurship, touching nearly every student and year-round cocurricular programs via our nine dedicated staff and six paid EIRs.

Venture Acceleration: From our "Innovation Series" bringing every student into the entrepreneurial process to our i.Lab Incubator for serious founders with meaningful non-dilutive and in-kind funding, and myriad programs in between—including Batten Innovation Grants and Founder Fellowships—Darden students have plentiful opportunities to nurture their ideas into reality.

Sponsored Internships: The Darden Venture Fund Fellows and Batten Venture Internships support dozens of students in kickstarting careers with high-growth start-ups and VCs.

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, Erasmus Enterprise, Yes!Delft Rotterdam (3 institutes)

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 37

Tuition: $65,000

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 157

What Sets Us Apart

The Master in Strategic Entrepreneurship provides students with the entrepreneurial competencies and skills and the strategic entrepreneurship theories to discover, recognize, and exploit business opportunities for existing firms or by building a new one. Our aim is to provide high-quality training that allows students to start their own company, or have an entrepreneurial job within established firms. One important aspect of our offering is to train for both entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship. Students are exposed to a variety of entrepreneurial challenges that allow them to acquire entrepreneurial skills needed for their careers (either within an existing organization or for a new venture).

University of South Florida

Nault Center for Entrepreneurship

Tampa, FL

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 55

Tuition: $17,000 (in-state); $32,000 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 166

What Sets Us Apart

Our master's program in Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies has several distinguishing features. First and foremost, our program requires every student to create a business (virtual or non-virtual) as a solopreneur or founder of a team-based venture. We provide all these students with a support infrastructure that facilitates venture creation (workshops, mentors, seed funding, networking, etc.). Second, we strongly encourage all our students to take part in the many extracurricular programs we offer (same-day pitch competitions, our year-long HUSTLE venture creation competition, the Student Innovation Incubator, networking events, SBDC activities, etc.). And third, we bring the entrepreneurial ecosystem into the classroom in the form of guest speakers, projects proposed by SMEs, and new ventures in the local community where students in teams can work on them for credit and vie for a spot in one of the local incubators or accelerators in the Tampa Bay region.

University of Utah

Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute

Salt Lake CIty, UT

Number of Entrepreneurship Courses Offered: 28

Tuition: $34,500 (in-state); $35,000 (out-of-state)

Companies Started by Graduates Over the Last 5 Years: 171

What Sets Us Apart

Students have an exceptional academic experience learning entrepreneurship inside of the classroom and then immediately apply what they have learned through our........

© Entrepreneur