Biz Week: Degrees Designed for Rural Business Allow Grads to Apply Skills to Farms and Businesses in Rural America

Colleges across the nation are increasingly creating Rural Entrepreneurship programs. That’s the story from Business Week Magazine. Here are highlights:

The problem of getting business grads to apply their skills to the farms and businesses of rural America is a pressing one in states such as Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Dwindling populations, empty storefronts, and the shutdown of manufacturing plants have made the economic problems facing rural towns even more acute in recent years. Business school administrators are starting to realize they can play a role in helping to reverse—or at least slow down—the economic slide of some of these areas by creating innovative courses and extension programs that will encourage people to move back to these areas and start or work for local businesses.

Some schools, such as Edgewood College in Madison, Wis., are creating master's degree programs in urban and rural economic development. Other large land-grant state universities, such as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, are encouraging the growth of rural businesses through entrepreneurship centers, research grants to study rural entrepreneurship, and rural business mentorship programs. One school, Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, is launching an MBA in community economic development for the first time this fall.

Indeed, business schools can play a key role in helping to rejuvenate the nation's rural areas, said John Fernandes, president of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the accrediting agency for business schools. The problem is that most haven't begun to think about developing programs or curricula in this area, he said. Of the AACSB's 671 member schools, only about 40 have programs that mention a focus on rural or local economic development and collaboration in their mission statements. "I think it is one of those things that has kind of flown below the radar of most business schools," he said. "It might be sort of a natural extension of schools in rural areas, but maybe the rest of the world hasn't been paying attention."