AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin is one of the leading universities for producing future entrepreneurs, ranking No. 9 in the world for undergraduates and No. 18 for graduate students. The rankings by PitchBook Data, a research and technology organization that tracks venture capital, private equity and merger and acquisition transactions, underscore the university’s commitment to producing entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.
PitchBook’s annual Top 100 Colleges Ranked by Startup Founders compares schools by the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have founded companies backed by venture capital. The undergraduate and graduate rankings rely on PitchBook data and are based on the number of founders whose companies received a first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2012, and Oct. 21, 2022. It also analyzed educational data on more than 144,000 founders.
Entrepreneurship and innovation have been a focus for UT Austin for years. The university founded several programs and entities on campus that support tech commercialization, educate student entrepreneurs, and encourage local startup community engagement. They serve as an intellectual hub for research and enterprise. They include the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, Longhorn Startup, Austin Technology Incubator, IC² Institute, Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship, Texas Innovation Center and the Office of Technology Commercialization. The university also has programs specific to undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurs.
Additionally, the university has established Discovery to Impact to lead the university’s research commercialization efforts. The unit was recently selected by the National Science Foundation to lead a regional, four-state training program for researchers seeking to move their discoveries from the lab to the market.
The ranking comes on the heels of several other top-tier accolades for the university including placing No. 38 among national public and private universities in the most recent undergraduate rankings by U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News also ranked UT Austin at No. 43 overall in the latest Best Global Universities rankings and the No. 1 university in Texas.
