Both Tampa-based universities are among the top schools in the country for entrepreneurs.
University of Tampa and University of South Florida’s entrepreneur programs topped the annual Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine report.
UT made both the undergraduate and graduate ranking, at No. 27 and No. 30, respectively. It ranked No. 17 and 20 in 2020. According to the report, UT had 27 companies graduate over the last five years. It has seven courses for its undergraduate program, which is a mix of in-classroom and real-world experience.
“While entrepreneurship education at thousands of educational institutions has been attempting to produce companies, our focus has been on creating and building talent that when mixed into an entrepreneurial ecosystem establish leaders, innovators and educators,” the university said in the report.
USF landed at No. 19 for its graduate program, dropping slightly from No. 18 in 2020. It also offers an undergraduate program, which is unranked. It offers 147 entrepreneur courses and has had 84 companies launch over the last five years. Many of the courses are multidisciplinary, with requirements to take classes from the College of Engineering. The school has also launched a new initiative identifying USF-owned patents with commercial potential and creating LLCs for all six of those patents.
The programs were among 50 chosen by the organizations, which evaluated them based on the percentage of faculty, students and alumni actively and successfully involved in entrepreneurial endeavors; the number and reach of mentorship programs, scholarships and grants for entrepreneurial studies; and the level of support for school-sponsored business plan competitions.
“Since the mid-2000s when we first reported these ranking lists, student interest in entrepreneurship has grown dramatically, as has the commitment to entrepreneurship studies within higher education,” Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor in chief, said in a statement. “Equally impressive have been the extraordinary contributions of the business community to these programs. [The school’s] programs have robust experiential components, and their students receive awesome mentoring and networking support that will serve them for years to come.”
Other Florida universities on the undergraduate list are: Florida State University landed at No. 19 and No. 2 in the Southeast, Florida Gulf Coast University at No. 22, Florida International University at No. 42 and Florida Atlantic University at No. 47. For graduate programs, Florida International University landed at No. 38, Florida Atlantic University was No. 40 and the University of Florida was No. 47.
