With more than 80% of MBA students wanting to start their own business or work for a cool start-up, media publications have rushed to rank accredited universities and colleges on which has the best entrepreneurial programs. No doubt, the top ranked schools get some bragging rights, but that’s about it.  With the exception of Stanford, often ranked number 1 and truly with a start-up factory and ecosystem called Silicon Valley next door, the rest of the rankings get murky quickly because there is no real way to measure these schools on who is really good at entrepreneurship or can even teach it for that matter.

I will gladly disclose that the Oxford Center considered ranking entrepreneurial colleges and universities, but decided against it after we realized we would need at least 12 years of information about the schools, their graduates and their graduates’ companies, plus 3 full-time staff members to come up with any credible rankings. Let’s get real.

I think a better way to measure entrepreneurial leadership and aptitude at any university is to look at the university itself. Specifically, what entrepreneurial outcomes has it racked up beyond the size of its endowment? Is it full of academic bureaucrats playing petty games at the top, or is it growing leaps and bounds in innovations, new real-world programs, community involvement, etc.? Is it being entrepreneurial – leveraging its ecosystem of alumni to get bigger and better students and sponsors like a smart start-up in Seattle or Silicon Valley? I would argue that kind of university with a “can do” culture is where entrepreneurs can learn how to build a business, much more so than ranking what are often token entrepreneurial programs as the vast majority are still taught in the four walls of a classroom.  You might ask, “Does this entrepreneurial university exist and what does it look like?” I know one exists as I have watched it for many years and this past Saturday all of its entrepreneurial DNA and dreams converged and came through loud and clear as Kennesaw State University (in Georgia) launched its inaugural home football game that had all the hype, pomp and circumstance of a pre-IPO roadshow. The kind of show you would expect from Apple or Netflix rolling out a brand new product.  But how can a university be as entrepreneurially good as what I witnessedSaturday?  Well, the entrepreneurial DNA of this show actually started in 1981 when Betty Siegel was chosen as the President, becoming the first female President in the University System of Georgia. Enrollment her first year was 4,195 students compared to KSU’s 2015 Fall enrollment of 33,000 students who hold the highest academic standards in the school’s history.

KSU stays on brand message better than the Marlborough man: Bigger and Better’ go together, so get more students and we will worry about the growth pains later. I have never met a successful fast-growth entrepreneur who did not have the exact same mindset.  But what really makes them worthy of mention in the same conversation as Stanford – when it comes to entrepreneurship – is KSU’s willingness to try things and not run from failure when new projects or ventures did not work out, a true phenomenon since failure of any type is shunned like the plague in just about any academic circle you stick your foot in at any time.  Obviously, a lot of good stuff has worked out KSU’s way and it was all on display Saturday, but they had their fair share of doozies.

I often have been asked, “What in the world were you thinking?” I remember asking them the same question when they partnered with the highly partisan Newt Gingrich to teach leadership courses to potential congressional recruits and others in the GOP tent.

Hey, that one did not work out but I also noticed no one got fired even though it felt like the whole world was coming down on them. However, starting the family business center and elevating entrepreneurs in the business school back as far as the late 1980′s were major wins.

Even with 12 major competitors within a 100-mile radius, KSU added thousands of students, taller buildings, and today it’s quite a giant with two campuses, over 100,000 alumni and an economic impact that exceeds a billion dollars a year. We all thought it would come to an abrupt end when Siegel retired in 2006 at the same time her ambitiously creative, action-biased Business School Dean, Tim Mescon, left to become President of another university. Although Tim was quite a brilliant academic, he was intensely interested in entrepreneurship many years before entrepreneurs became cool. In the 90′s, he and I would have breakfast and talk shop about the company I was growing. With both Siegel and Mescon walking out the door, we thought KSU’s entrepreneurship had left the very buildings they had built. But more magic than ever happened. Quite frankly, I think the school got lucky. The replacements, Dr. Daniel Papp as President, Ken Harmon as Provost, and Kat Schwaig as the Business School Dean were the right people with the right skills at the right time to embrace and capitalize on the past and to take the school to an even higher level academically, financially and entrepreneurially. The new team realized they could not get to big-time university status in the South, unless they had a football program for the community, alumni and students, thus making the magic happen.

Used with permission. Reach Cliff at [email protected]

About Cliff Oxford

Cliff Oxford, who is founder of The Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs and writes The Next Level blog for the New York Times, started his career at U.P.S., where he developed a technologically advanced help-desk system that was recognized for saving the company more than $250 million in its first year. In 1995, he left U.P.S. to start STI Knowledge, an information technology company with offices in the United States, Britain, South Africa, India, Hong Kong and the Philippines that made the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America three years in a row. After selling the company, Mr. Oxford endowed Emory University’s executive M.B.A. program and created a fully accredited Entrepreneur MBA with Brenau University. More recently, he has started an education company, the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. Its mission is to encourage business economic development by helping business owners and CEOs thrive in fast growth. Used with permission.