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Washington — Syed Hussain started his business in 2007, prompted by a desire to fight extortion. That is what he calls $60- to $70-per-hour fees he had been asked to pay for tutoring when he was an undergraduate student.
The torment of not being able to afford tutoring led Hussain to develop uProdigy. Through this firm, 120 English-speaking tutors in South Asia and the United States offer affordable online help to America’s college students. Not only is uProdigy prospering, but the business plan Hussain crafted for it was selected a winner in a major business competition.
That contest — the $100K Business Plan Competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — is one of many ways an increasing number of U.S. colleges and universities promote entrepreneurship among students and faculty members. The competition awards prizes in cash and business services to student entrepreneurs, who devise best business plans for new ventures.
Purely technical training does not suffice any more, says Tina Seelig, executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. With advances in biotechnology and information technology, “we need engineers and scientists who can get ideas out of lab into the marketplace,” she told America.gov.
In the past, entrepreneurship programs were available only to business school students. This started to change in the 1990s when educators realized that students in science, engineering and other disciplines had to have entrepreneurship and leadership skills to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
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Tags: college entrepreneurs, college entrepreneurship programs, entrepreneurship spreads across US university campuses, government's role on entrepreneurship
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