Many college students strive to do something notable with their lives after they leave the halls of their universities. Some may already have a list of companies they’d like to apply to or maybe even an idea of the kind of work they’d like to do.

There are others who take the path of the self-made independents. In the United States, most people in the business world admire one type of business person: the young entrepreneur.

The Internet social network Facebook was started by a college student, and it’s the same story with Dell computers. If these men can create something out of nothing while rushing to 8 a.m. classes, why can’t others?

“Entrepreneurship is the key avenue to wealth in the United States,” said Stephen Craft, dean of the business program at Birmingham-Southern College. As a result, more colleges are encouraging their students to take classes on entrepreneurship.

Several colleges and universities in Alabama are doing what they can to cater to the next potential business tycoons, such as Birmingham-Southern, Samford University and Auburn University. The schools have started classes and designed majors for students to learn the ins and outs of entrepreneurship. Some colleges require students to take entrepreneur classes before their senior year, while many schools have their 18-year-old freshmen learning the trade. Several professors said entrepreneurial skills are helpful for students not working toward a business degree.

“They are valuable for not just business students – they can be used by students in other disciplines,” said Franz Lohrke, Samford’s chair of the department of marketing and management. “Some would do better if they knew those skills. It’s also an attractive demand. They’re like heroes in the U.S. and they drive the economy, so we have a societal influence.”

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation said entrepreneurship is one of the fastest-growing courses in undergraduate schools. The foundation has spent $60 million in grants to fund entrepreneurship classes at 19 designated campuses.

In 1987, there were about 250 classes across the nation. Today, more than 2,000 colleges have some sort of entrepreneurship course.

But what does “entrepreneurship” mean? The National Business Education Association says an entrepreneur is a person of high aptitude who pioneers change by starting a business. They organize, manage and assume the risks of a business.

But is that all it is? Lohrke said there’s much more to add to that definition – an entrepreneur requires a fire and passion to start a business and to keep it going.

To combine the passion with the logistics of running a business, universities with entrepreneur programs help students avoid pitfalls, such as running out of money, how to pick a location, how to make money and create a business model, said Lohrke, who started at Samford two years ago and has since helped grow and organize their entrepreneurial field. “They need motivation, self-starting and a fire in their gut, but we can help start that fire,” he said.

To teach a class based on a topic of concept, both traditional and nontraditional methods are used. Students can’t learn strictly from taking notes or memorizing chapters for pop quizzes. Birmingham-Southern uses experience rather than text books.

“Courses are very applied,” said Craft, whose school has been teaching entrepreneurship for the past 10 years. “Students work on a live problem, such as working on a merger between two companies that are actually merging. They work on living, breathing case examples.”

Auburn University professor David Ketchen has taught classes on entrepreneurship since 1990 and has one hands-on project that works. He pairs a company with a class, divides the class into several teams and the teams are to prepare a business plan for the company. The winner with the best plan gets a prize.

“We use textbooks to where you can get concepts, ideas and theories. Then we have visiting entrepreneurs that come and visit and share experiences good and bad,” Ketchen said.

Lohrke agreed that sticking to the books is not the only way to teach. “There are good text books, but we also use guest speakers,” he said. “We experiment with elements too, because in some ways it’s like trying to learn to play a musical instrument by reading a book. It’s important, but until you can blow some air into it or play the strings, all you get is technical, not experimental.”

Lohrke added that Samford encourages students to get internships during their junior and senior years to give them a better background for when they graduate.

“They need real world people rather than textbook people,” he said. “Vocab, concepts and theories are from paper, which is what students are used to, but they need to complement it with experiences.”

One thing that Samford has is a specific, required freshman entrepreneurship class for business majors. At Auburn, students start entrepreneur classes their junior year, and Birmingham-Southern students don’t start specific classes until senior year. Lohrke said it gets every 18-year-old student majoring in business to consider starting their own company. During their second semester, students learn how to write a basic business plan.

The freshmen are given the task of setting up a business plan for opening business, like a restaurant. They then figure out the costs, location, perform market research and project out years, which they can research in their dorm without taking other more advanced classes.

“This way we’re getting them early,” Lohrke said. “It’s almost too late at other colleges who start in their junior year. By that point, they only have two years to learn.”

Classes like these help students get on the right track in a safe environment, Ketchen said.

“Experience and common sense are important, but entrepreneurs who have had classes on the topic have an additional foundation for their ideas about what works and what doesn’t,” Ketchen said.

Then again, many entrepreneurs haven’t taken courses on the subject and are successful using only their wits and luck. That leads some to question whether entrepreneurship can be taught.

“There are people who don’t need training,” Lohrke said. “They instinctively know it without a class. I know entrepreneurs who have had little to no college and done well. Could they have done better if they had classes? Who knows.”

Each university has had their share of success stories. Samford alum Mickey Newsome is CEO of Hibbett Sports, David Oakley is founder of SelectMySpace and Marvin Mann is chairman emeritus and former CEO of Lexmark International Inc.

At Auburn, alum Eddie Birchfield and partners started AdTran, a communications and networking equipment company in Huntsville.

Birmingham-Southern is seeing more undergraduates leave and open their own business. Some students have gone into restaurant and retail stores before graduation.

Sometimes the best way to help students focus is to give them an outlet by taking these specific classes and learning from entrepreneurs before them. Both Ketchen and Lohrke agree that passion is needed and cannot be taught and neither can resiliency.

“We cannot light that fire. We can’t teach intuition, but sometimes it is based on the study of entrepreneurship and asking questions,” Lohrke added. “Some students recognize opportunities and some miss it. We study why it works and why it doesn’t. We help them with steps based on past experience.”