MAKING BUSINESS SCHOOL PAY OFF

FARTHER AFIELD More MBA students will be venturing beyond the classroom.

Ask an entrepreneur whether the skills that make her successful can be taught in school, and you’re bound to get an eye-roll. Many founders, whether they can prove it or not, believe their make-it-work mentality comes from birth, not a classroom.

In the age of Shark Tank, however, it’s hardly surprising that lots of them are willing to give the classroom a try. About a third of U.S. business schools now offer degree programs in entrepreneurship, a 10 percent increase from 10 years ago, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Furthermore, notes AACSB senior vice president Juliane Iannarelli, more schools now support entrepreneurship outside the curriculum, from sponsoring pitch contests to launching incubator programs.

But with the proliferation of such programs, how is anyone supposed to know which ones are worth the money? Inc. has partnered with the MBAfocused publication Poets & Quants to produce a rigorous analysis of which businessschool tracks produce the best results. The P&Q model measures a dozen variables, including how much accelerator space is available and the ratio of entrepreneurs to MBAs.

It won’t surprise people who follow MBA programs that Stanford Graduate School of Business and Babson College come out very high in the rankings. But the number one school, we suspect, will raise some eyebrows. (See it, and the complete listing, on page 89.)