Four-Year Plan: Click here to view the Four-Year Plan for this specific program. To find out more about Four-Year Plans, visit the Policies and Procedures page.
Thinking about the discipline: The entrepreneurship major prepares students for the challenges of today’s fast-paced and uncertain economic environment where competition is based on opportunity recognition, innovation, speed to market, and entrepreneurial drive. In this innovative degree program, the focus is on developing a needed skill set and an entrepreneurial mindset, as well as creating value in the marketplace. Students learn to capitalize on uncertainty rather than avoid it and embrace the learning that comes from taking calculated risks. The curriculum is multidisciplinary and designed to give students an opportunity to develop their own creative skills while applying basic business principles to the challenges of starting a new business, growing a business, or managing a family business. The program emphasizes the new venture-creation model and its application in small or large companies and in profit and not-for-profit organizations. Course topics include idea generation, opportunity recognition, feasibility analysis, business plan development, venture financing, early stage strategies, corporate venturing, and management of innovation. Students have the chance to meet and interact with entrepreneurial leaders in the region and throughout the world.
The entrepreneurship major prepares its graduates for a wide range of business-related career paths. Some are prepared to start their own business, either soon after graduation or at some point in the future. Some are prepared to begin a more traditional leadership path where the self-reliance, initiative, creativity, and communication skills developed in this program are viewed as positive qualities by prospective employers. Still others are prepared to apply their newly developed business planning and analysis skills to obtain entry-level positions with consulting firms, commercial lending institutions, and private equity firms. The major in entrepreneurship provides students with career options not available to those graduating with more traditional business majors.
Special opportunities for our students: Internship opportunities are very diverse and are continually being upgraded through the efforts of the department’s professional advisory boards and faculty. There is also an active student organization that provides outstanding professional networking opportunities at regular meetings and activities. Each year, the department faculty select the outstanding entrepreneurship student of the year.
Students earning the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (B.S.B.A.) with a major in entrepreneurship are eligible to be considered for membership in Beta Gamma Sigma, the international honor society serving business programs accredited by AACSB International - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Membership in Beta Gamma Sigma is the highest academic recognition a business student anywhere in the world can receive in a business college accredited by AACSB International.
You should also know: All students successfully completing the B.S.B.A. major in entrepreneurship automatically earn an interdisciplinary Minor in Business as part of their required course of study for the major degree. The Minor in Business satisfies the university’s minor/focus/second major requirement for graduation.
Special admission requirements: The Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (B.S.B.A.) with a major in entrepreneurship is a selective admission program. Students enter the program as a Pre-Entrepreneurship major. Upon successful completion of the six courses in the selective admission group (ACC 200 , ACC 201 , BUS 230 , ECO 200 , ECO 201 , and MKT 205 ) with a grade of C- or better in each and the achievement of an overall NKU GPA of 2.500 or better, students are officially admitted to the College as a BSBA-Entrepreneurship Major. All transfer students enter as pre-majors and must complete a minimum of 12 credit hours at NKU in order to establish the NKU GPA for selective admission into the major, regardless of individual course completion status.
♦ Indicates prerequisite.
These prerequisites are not included in the program totals in the table below, but they must be completed IN ADDITION TO other program requirements.
