The Martin J. Whitman School of Management was ranked No. 13 on The Princeton Review’s annual rankings of entrepreneurship programs in the U.S.

The report, which was published on Nov. 10, placed Whitman after schools like Babson College, Northeastern University and the University of Oklahoma. The entrepreneurship program in Whitman was ranked No. 6 in last year’s report, but despite suffering a decline in ranking this year, Alexander McKelvie, department chair and associate professor of entrepreneurship in Whitman, insists that the quality of the program still remains high.

McKelvie said the school was “very disappointed and very surprised” by the ranking for two reasons.

“Firstly, we had a banner year — we had more start-ups than we’ve ever had before, they raised more money than ever before, we had more students in our classes than ever before, but despite that, we dropped,” McKelvie said. “Secondly, a lot of the things that we value aren’t taken into consideration by Princeton Review. So all the cross-campus entrepreneurship things we are doing aren’t included at all.”

McKelvie said The Princeton Review has changed how it measures entrepreneurship programs and it didn’t take into consideration the things that Whitman highly values, including cross-campus entrepreneurship and veterans, among others.

In addition, Whitman goes through a process of validation for all the data it submits to The Princeton Review, but it is unclear if all universities are doing this. Because of this, not all the data required for the ranking were submitted this year, McKelvie said.

“The fact that we were punished or lowered in the rankings because of not submitting data which we didn’t feel comfortable with is OK — I’m happy to take that slap on the wrist because we are going to do things the proper way,” McKelvie said. “It’s important to keep this process ethical.”

Todd Moss, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and sustainability, said he wasn’t as worried by the rankings.

“Of course it’s disappointing, but I’m fairly convinced that we’ll be back in the top 10 next year, because we’re doing things now that they are looking for,” Moss said.

Moss described the process through which The Princeton Review and other agencies rank programs as a piano keyboard. He said they only measure a couple of keys on the keyboard, but programs are doing things across the whole keyboard.

Whitman is planning to further improve its alumni network program, but in terms of academic curriculums, everything is staying pretty much the same, McKelvie said.

“We have an excellent program, we are actually a model for many other schools, and so we always go through a process of consistent development and approval,” McKelvie said. “We are doing things right by the students, not simply what Princeton Review wants us to do.”

McKelvie added that entrepreneurship at SU is “easily a top 5 undergraduate program.”

Published on November 18, 2015 at 9:48 pm

Contact Saniya: ssmore@syr.edu