Why Not Teach Running a Business in College?

[caption id="attachment_2317" align="alignleft" width="316" caption="Why Don't Teach Students How to Run A Business?"][/caption]

With Forbes' release of the Top Colleges in the Country, the online magazine also covered a story dealing with the education of becoming an entrepreneur in college as well. Why not teach that in college? When it comes to graduating from college, I feel that there are three options: Graduating school, living with Mom and Dad on the couch, or looking for a job and starting your life! Creating a job versus finding a job is a common debate in today's society. For some, the idea of creating your own business seems daunting and intimidating, and they would rather send out resumes and work for someone else. Forbes Magazine is here to discuss if schools should start instituting an education on becoming an entrepreneur.

Colleges like the University of Texas at Austin aim to give students an edge on start-up success. Tavaner Bushman, a News21 fellow who recently completed her masters at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, reports.

Late one night, Michael Koetting, a University of Texas at Austin (No. 185) sophomore, couldn’t crack a calculus problem. Since 90% of UT students use Facebook he wondered who might be online with a similar homework hiccup. Then a light bulb went off: What if he came up with an application that would allow him to video chat and instant message with people who might know the answer?

A year later 378 Beta users are testing Hoot.Me, which allows them to interact with one another via video and instant messaging. To make Hoot.Me profitable, Koetting and fellow students Gaurav Sanghani and Sid Upadhyay plan to sign up professional tutors and collect a transaction fee when they sell time through the app.

Koetting transformed his concept into an actual business last fall when he attended 3 Day Startup, an Austin-based student entrepreneurship event. 3DS is just one of the university’s programs fostering new ideas through intense hands-on education. Texas has been a player in the tech innovation game since Michael Dell began building computers in his Austin dorm room in the ’80s, but it only recently launched full-force into the world of incubators. Though often in the shadow of heavy-hitters such as Stanford University (No. 5) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 9), UT has succeeded in carving out its own space in tech innovation. “It is generally reported that today’s students come to a university wanting to change the world for the good,” says Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and UT’s Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise. “Innovation by starting companies is one of the ways to do so.”

Read more at Forbes Magazine