Its Global Entrepreneurship Week!

Its that time of year again: Global Entrepreneurship Week. The organizers have done an amazing job this year and there are events all over the place. Get out and get active — there are over 5200 events that are listed on the website.

Entrepreneurship is the most powerful human activity and its great to see people celebrating, expanding and supporting it this week. Good one Kauffman Foundation and Make Your Mark for putting this together.

In addition to teaching New Venture Creation this week, I will be celebrating this week by giving a guest talk in Zoltan Acs Social Entrepreneurship Graduate Seminar at GMU’s School of Public Policy and will also be attending one of the events taking place as an ‘official’ Global Entrepreneurship Week event. I will blog and tweet that one (@campus_entre). (I am still choosing between two events, will let you know when I finalize the schedule)

The Power of Phil Knight (Pioneer Campus Entrepreneur)

Before there was Kevin Plank and Under Armour — Phil Knight was using his learnings, contacts, and education from Oregon and Stanford to launch Nike (originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports). Knight and Nike’s staying power can be witnessed by the recent controversy surrounding Marcus Jordan (son of Michael and Juanita), the University of Central Florida, and Adidas.

Basically, Marcus is an 18 year old basketball player at UCF and refuses to wear any shoe other than Air Jordans (produced by Phil Knight’s Nike). UCF has an apparel and shoe contract with Adidas and as long as Jordan wears the his dad’s shoes, the school is in breach of the contract.

The most recent update is that Jordan won’t budge and he wore the Nike shoes during UCF’s first game. Adidas is therefore not going to pay UCF. The school stands to lose $3 million.

BTW, Marcus Jordan scored 1 point in the opening game, he was 0-3 from the field and 1-2 at the free throw line. He played 23 minutes.

Whats Wrong w/ Higher Ed in the US? Lots!

Newmark’s Door has a great blog entry offering a compilation of criticisms of higher education in the U.S. Those quoted included professors, entrepreneurs, and . Those targetted include law schools, humanities, and computer science departments. There is something for everyone in this piece. Here are a few snippets and who they are attributed to.

Joel Spolsky (Entrepreneur):

Many universities have managed to convince themselves that the more irrelevant the curriculum is to the real world, the more elite they are. It’s the liberal arts way. Leave it to the technical vocational institutes, the red-brick universities, and the lesser schools endowed with many compass points (“University of Northern Southwest Florida”) to actually produce programmers. The Ivy Leagues of the world want to teach linear algebra and theories of computation and Haskell programming, and all the striver CS departments trying to raise their standards are doing so by eliminating anything practical from the curriculum in favor of more theory.

Athletic SAT from Under Armour and IMG

Under Armour and leading talent agency IMG have joined forces and among other things, will begin creating a standard of measurement for high school athletes looking to play in college.

As we all know, college athletics is a huge business and many global brands have come out of that part of the campus eco-system. Nike and Gatorade are two examples (as is Under Armour).

Both sides of the recruiting equation (athletes and schools) spend countless time, effort and money trying to find the right fit of student-athlete to school/program. Below are some interesting snippets from the article by Daniel Kaplan of the Sports Business Journal (article via Baltimore Business Journal).

The Baltimore sportswear company and IMG are planning more than 100 global one- to three-day combines for high school athletes next year at which participants will be scored on a range of metrics, including physical attributes, mental stamina and sport-specific skills.

IMG is already a leader in training young athletes at its IMG Academies, and Under Armour will now be heavily involved with that Bradenton, Fla., facility, including supplying apparel, footwear and accessories.

The venture puts Under Armour’s (NYSE: UA) brand in front of young athletes and fits with the company’s performance-brand mission as it moves into new areas of the apparel business. IMG, meanwhile, as an established player in the training business, has benefits to gain by partnering with a youth-oriented brand.

The article then explains, “the new index will be called Combine360 and the two companies plan to announce the venture today. It is uncertain at the moment what name the combines will be branded under,” and that “there will be three types of combines under the Combine360 concept. One will test core physical attributes; the second will test sport-specific skills; and the third will test a wide range of elements such as mental toughness, nutrition and reactive times. At the end of the testing, the participant gets a score, something that IMG’s Pyne said will be the athletic equivalent of an SAT score.“

Like SATs, ACTs, and other standardized tests were controversial enough. It is fascinating watching as Under Armour stays close to its roots on the campus in order to strengthen its relationship with its customers and bring innovative products to them (students-athletes, their families, administrators, & coaches).

Can You Be Entrepreneurial w/ a $1 Million Base Pay?

In recent years we have heard about how entrepreneurial university administrators have become. Creating new models and charting new paths for their august institutions. A new study from the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that 23 Private University Presidents in the US are making at least $1 million a year. Hot Dog, bureaucracy pays! From an article by Mary Beth Marklein in the USA Today,

Here are the Chronicle’s findings, based on federal tax forms, of the highest-paid presidents of private non-profit colleges and universities. Compensation includes salaries, fees, bonuses, severance payments, deferred compensation, and health benefits and pension plans.

1. Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., $1,598,247.

2. Davd Sargent, Suffolk University, Boston, $1,496,593 .

3. Steadman Upham, University of Tulsa, $1,485,275.

4.Richard Meyers, Webster University, St. Louis, $1,429,738.

5. Cornelius Kerwin, American University, Washington, D.C., $1,419,339.

Perhaps the real entrepreneurial opportunity is becoming a money manager for Private University Presidents?