Babson, Ford plan program for minority entrepreneurs
Babson College and Ford Motor Co. said yesterday they are launching the first academic program to focus on African-American entrepreneurship with several historically black colleges and universities.
The program will feature case studies of successful black entrepreneurs, business education focusing on entrepreneurship, and a teaching exchange between participating black schools with Babson College of Wellesley. In the 2003 US News & World Report, Babson was ranked number one in entrepreneurial education.
African-Americans start businesses at a relatively high rate, but those firms are less likely to survive and grow because there is a lack of educational programs that focus on black entrepreneurship, according to a 2002 study funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researched by Babson and London Business School. The study found that black men with graduate education are at least twice as likely to get involved in start-ups as are whites with similar backgrounds.
"These entrepreneurs need the tools to achieve the greater success and that's what we hope that the Babson-Ford HBCU program will provide," said Michael Chmura, spokesman for Babson College.
The historically black colleges and universities participating in the program include Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, N.C., Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., and Grambling State University in Grambling, La.
Students can sign up for the program at the selected schools and the number of students that can be enrolled will be up to each school, said Ford Motor Co. spokeswoman Paige Johnson.
Mitchell Johnson, a Ford spokesman, said the company wants to encourage entrepreneurship amongst minorities and hopes that they will consider working in the future with Ford and working in the company's dealerships, a form of small business.
Ford says it has the largest percentage of minority-owned dealerships, employing 209 of the 529 black dealers in the auto industry.
Wendy Lee can be reached at wlee@globe.com.
