Extract

A popular cliché is the notion that entrepreneurship programs should be run like ventures. They have objectives, strategies, products, customers, expenses and revenues sources. Accordingly, so the argument goes, they should be profit centers. This argument is quite unusual for an academic unit, as they are more typically conceived as either cost centers or revenue centers within the larger college or university financial model. Yet entrepreneurship holds more promise for generating revenues and returns than any other area within a business school, and than most academic areas across a university campus. Historically, academic programs have focused on teaching, research and service, and left the financial issues to others. Universities themselves could maintain solvency simply by raising tuition fees or getting more support from the government or conducting the occasional fund-raising drive. This situation has changed over the last 25 years or so, and is likely to change even more in the years ahead. The contemporary university environment is one where costs have risen at a pace far exceeding inflation, while traditional sources of revenue have not kept pace.