A recent article ranks “Entrepreneurship” among the 20 most useless college degrees (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/20-college-degrees-that-are-now-considered-a-waste-of-time/ss-AA1yAe2f).
Is this true? Is entrepreneurial education a waste of time? Does entrepreneurship belong in business schools? Are business schools failing the very students they aim to help?
Here are three ways business schools may be hurting aspiring entrepreneurs.
#1. A 4-Year Degree isn’t Necessary for Small Business.
Many business school entrepreneurship programs focus on small business management, but do aspiring entrepreneurs really need a four-year degree to start or manage a business? Especially when most business schools emphasize corporate skills over the specific disciplines that drive startup success, such as:
- Venture finance – securing funding without a track record or pedigree.
- Venture marketing – attracting customers and scaling without significant capital.
- Venture operations – achieving efficiency and profitability without major assets.
The skills needed for small business management can often be learned faster and more affordably outside of a traditional four-year program. Practical alternatives, such as Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), offer real-world training at a fraction of the cost and time of a traditional degree. These programs allow entrepreneurs to learn while building their business – without accumulating unnecessary student debt.
#2. Business Schools Push a VC-Centric Approach that helps Few
While some business schools teach bootstrapping, most focus on innovation theories, product-market fit, and venture capital. This approach, modeled after Silicon Valley’s VC-focused incubators and startup ecosystem, promotes pitching and angel investors. While this may sound promising to many aspiring entrepreneurs, the reality is sobering:
In contrast, billion-dollar entrepreneurs rarely start with, or use, VC funding. A study of 87 billion-dollar entrepreneurs found that only ~1% followed the traditional VC path from the outset (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2023/03/14/the-1-secret-of-billion-dollar-entrepreneurs-94-took-off-without-vc/). Instead, they built their companies using strategic business skills and finance-smart strategies. This category includes entrepreneurs such as Sam Walton, Michael Dell, Joe Martin, and Gaston Taratuta who never got VC funding. Despite these clear examples, business schools continue to prioritize a VC-driven playbook that serves only a select few – leaving most aspiring entrepreneurs unprepared for real-world success.
#3. Business Schools are Primarily Corporate Focused.
Most business schools are designed for corporate-minded students, with the MBA serving as a finishing program for those pursuing executive roles. Entrepreneurship often feels like an afterthought – or worse, a cynical tool to raise funding from successful alumni – rather than a serious discipline. This corporate bias is reflected in the curriculum, which prioritizes a focus on managing existing businesses that have capital rather than the reality of how billion-dollar entrepreneurs started new unicorns. The high cost of an MBA, paired with the uncertain return on investment from launching a venture, further reinforces this corporate focus.
To remain relevant in growth entrepreneurship, business schools must rethink their approach for aspiring unicorn-entrepreneurs – placing the skills and strategies of unicorn-entrepreneurs at the core of their programs and equipping students with the skills to build growth-focused ventures without VC. After takeoff, entrepreneurs will not need to pitch – VCs will come to the entrepreneurs as they did with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jan Koum (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2022/02/28/4-ways-to-make-vcs-come-to-you/).
What B-Schools should Focus on?
If business schools want to justify their cost and value for entrepreneurs, they must shift focus. A staggering 94% of billion-dollar entrepreneurs launched without VC, and 76% avoided it altogether. By doing so, they kept control of their companies, and captured more of the wealth they created ((https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2024/08/07/4-key-reasons-why-unicorn-entrepreneurs-favor-sales-over-marketing/)). Yet many business schools still emphasize pitch competitions, incubators, and VC attraction strategies – an approach that benefits only a small fraction of startups and mainly in Silicon Valley. Their students can benefit more by learning the skills that actually help entrepreneurs build and scale giant companies.
MY TAKE: No wonder entrepreneurship ranks among the 20 worst majors. Business schools are mimicking Harvard and Stanford, pushing a VC-centric curriculum instead of teaching unicorn-entrepreneurship—the skills to build billion-dollar businesses without VC. Most students will never raise VC, succeed with VC, or profit from VC. Shouldn’t we prepare them for reality?
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