NJIT Ranked Best Public School in Northeast for Undergraduate Entrepreneurship

New Jersey Institute of Technology is the top public university in the Northeast for undergraduate entrepreneurship studies, according to The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine.

The improvement reflects NJIT's and the Martin Tuchman School of Management's dedicated focus on the importance of training students to become innovators who can positively impact society. It includes a jump of three spots to No. 4 among all Northeast schools, and up four spots to No. 30 nationally.

"It validates the changes that we've made to the program, because whenever you make an improvement to a curriculum it takes many years for the results," observed Cesar Bandera, associate professor and Leir Chair for Entrepreneurship, in NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management.

Bandera teaches entrepreneurship courses and said he's pleasantly surprised by the rankings jump, which he believes happened largely because of the academic diversity among undergraduate registration. There are now many students who major in computing, engineering and even architecture and design who are taking such courses, compared to all of the students coming from the business school just a few years ago. Design students especially stand out for their ability to present ideas convincingly, he added.

NJIT has many other recent accomplishments for budding business-builders. A new MTSM course in 2021 offered lessons on building companies for the space industry; NJIT joined a National Science Foundation research hub led by Princeton University; the university's VentureLink startup incubator diversified their audience while also entering the venture capital field; and the Undergraduate Research and Innovation program promotes and funds  students to conduct their own research that leads to innovations and entrepreneurial opportunities.

But there will be no resting upon laurels. Another new MTSM course, coming in spring 2023, will teach entrepreneurship when working with federal agencies as investors, commercial customers and policy makers. 

Bandera added that contrary to popular belief, the first thing entrepreneurship students learn isn't what works, it's what doesn't. It is vital to learn from the mistakes of others, he said, because in the real world there are more failed proposals than successful ones — and all are opportunities for learning.

Finally, on the research front, Bandera said NJIT must work even harder at technology translation out of classrooms and into businesses. "While research is what brings us to the R1 category, it is bringing this research to the market that will make us excel in the R1 category," he said.

Rather than simply licensing university-owned patents to businesses, he said, "Research translation asks the NJIT inventors to take a more direct role in commercialization … Our new focus on entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship for technological innovation with societal significance promotes NJIT’s growing focus on research translation. Strategically, we are in the right place at the right time."