Classes for would-be entrepreneurs are a hot trend at America’s universities. But can risk taking and originality be learned?
By Patricia B. Gray, FORTUNE Small Business, with additional reporting by Anne Field
March 10, 2006: 11:47 AM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE Small Business) - At 21, Diana Reed has already reached the pinnacle of one career. A senior at the University of Iowa, she is the Hawkeye Golden Girl, one of the top twirlers in the Big Ten. Every Saturday during football season, she strutted down the 50-yard line in sequins and Spandex, flinging her baton into the sky before a stadium jammed with tens of thousands of howling football fans.
Besides four hours of baton practice a day, Reed runs Diana’s Golden Twirlers, a for-profit school she started freshman year. One of her squads recently won the state twirling championship. A dual major in dance and business, Reed credits the four classes on entrepreneurship that she has taken at Iowa.
The new campus craze
The number of U.S. universities offering entrepreneurship classes has increased dramatically.
1985 300
1991 1,000
2005 1,992
Source: Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
“I learned how to think about twirling as a market, not just a sport,” she says. “My career as a competitive twirler may be coming to an end, but I can see there’s almost unlimited potential in the twirling market.”
Diana Reed has caught an entrepreneurial fever that is sweeping the nation’s campuses, as students jam into classes to learn how to launch, finance, and run their own companies.
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