Budding Entrepreneurs' Business Education Basics

Starting a business? There are many ways to learn startup basics without spending a fortune to get an MBA. You just need to know where to look

By Zachary Tracer

Educational programs for budding entrepreneurs have proliferated in the last decade, creating alternatives to the two-year master's degree in business administration that are both less costly and less time-consuming.

The options available include online business training tools offered by the Small Business Administration; free online courses from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management (Sloan Full-Time MBA Profile) in Cambridge, Mass.; accelerated MBA degrees from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (Kellogg Full-Time MBA Profile) in Evanston, Ill. and other institutions; and Master of Management programs from schools that include the City University of London's Cass Business School.

While a full-time MBA from highly-ranked programs such as that at Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) remains the gold standard for corporate recruiters, low-cost alternatives are suitable for individuals who aim to start their own companies, says Maury Hanigan, president of the New York-based Hanigan Consulting Group, a recruiting consultant to Goldman Sachs (GS), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and other companies. Interest in entrepreneurship among young people is growing. A Kauffman Foundation study found that 3.3 percent of college freshmen in 2008 said they hope to become business owners, up from 2.2 percent in 1993.

"If I gave advice to someone who wanted to start a business, my advice would not be to go to business school," says Hanigan.

What follows is a rundown of the programs available for would-be entrepreneurs who don't want to break the bank:

SBA PROGRAMS: The Small Business Administration offers 29 half-hour online training courses on topics that include accounting, cash flow, venture capital, creating a business plan, marketing, and becoming a government contractor. In fiscal year 2009, 609,000 people used the SBA's online business-training tools, about 70,000 more than the year before, says Ellen Thrasher, associate administrator of the SBA's Office of Entrepreneurship Education. She attributes the increase to the poor economy. In June the national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, with 14.6 million Americans out of work, according to the U.S. Labor Dept.

"I think that given the nature of the economy, there are people now who are thinking about going into business when perhaps they had not before," says Thrasher. "There are people seeking tools to help them survive."

SCORE: Formerly known as the Service Corps of Retired Executives, SCORE is a Herndon (Va.)-based nonprofit—partially funded by the SBA—that helps people start and grow small businesses. Through a network of more than 12,000 volunteer executives and entrepreneurs, SCORE provided online and offline mentoring, training, and advice to more than 375,000 people in fiscal year 2009, a 4.2 percent increase over 2008.

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