UMD Ranked in Top 10 for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Education for Third Straight Year

For the third consecutive year, the University of Maryland has attained a top 10 ranking in The Princeton Review’s annual survey of the Top Schools for Entrepreneurship. In the 2018 rankings, released this week and featured in the December issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, UMD improved one spot to No. 8 for undergraduate entrepreneurship education overall and No. 4 among all public universities. This marks the seventh consecutive year that UMD has been named a top 25 program for entrepreneurship studies.

The recent string of top 10 rankings coincides with the UMD’s campus-wide presidential initiative aiming to engage all 38,000 students in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E). This collaboration is spearheaded by the Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (AIE) and engages partners in undergraduate studies, student organizations, social innovation, and not only business and engineering but all 12 schools and colleges. In 2016-2017, there were over 15,000 student enrollments in UMD’s 195 I&E-related courses representing over 50 different campus departments.

“We talked to students from all over campus and discovered that they’re often forced to choose between either graduating on time or pursuing real-world projects or ventures they’re passionate about. We’re solving that problem by embedding I&E modules in more and more of the existing required general education and pre-requisite courses for various majors so that students no longer have to choose,” said Dean Chang, associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship at UMD and the head of AIE. “They get a small taste of innovation, real-world creative problem-solving, and entrepreneurship directly in the courses they were already going to take to graduate.”

The Princeton Review tallied its rankings for top entrepreneurship programs based on a survey it conducted from May through August 2017 of more than 300 schools offering programs in entrepreneurship studies. While most entrepreneurship rankings only include UMD’s extensive business or engineering entrepreneurship programs, The Princeton Review additionally reflects UMD’s unique efforts to engage all 38,000 students in I&E across all 12 colleges and schools.

The 60-question survey looked at each school’s commitment to entrepreneurship studies inside and outside the classroom. More than 40 data points were analyzed for the rankings. Among them were the percentage of faculty, students, and alumni actively and successfully involved in entrepreneurial endeavors, the number and reach of mentorship programs, and funding for scholarships and grants for entrepreneurial studies and projects.

For more information on The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur’s rankings, visit www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges. To learn more about innovation and entrepreneurship at UMD, visit innovation.umd.edu/learn.