For growing numbers of students, college is not just a time of learning, partying, and growing into young adulthood; it is fast becoming a place for building a business. More than 2,300 colleges and universities offer courses in entrepreneurship and small business management (an increase from just 200 schools in the 1970s) to more than 400,000 students, and many of them have trouble keeping up with demand for these classes. “Students used to come to college and assume that five to ten years down the road, they’d start a business,” says Gerry Hills, cofounder of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization. “[Today], they come in preparing to get ideas and launch.” Many collegiate entrepreneurs realize that if they are going to have a job when they graduate, it is likely to be one they have created for themselves. According to a recent survey by Accenture, only 16 percent of college graduates who applied for a job had one waiting for them after graduation. For a growing number of college students, landing a job in corporate America, starting on the bottom rung of an uncertain career ladder, has lost much of its allure. While studying at Harvard (where she majored in the history of science), Windsor Hanger worked in internships at OK! Magazine and at Bloomingdale’s, which offered her a marketing position when she graduated. Hanger turned down the job offer, choosing instead to focus on the business, HerCampus, an online magazine aimed at college women, that she had started with classmates Stephanie Kaplan and Annie Wang. “It’s not a pure dichotomy anymore that entrepreneurship is risky and other jobs are safe, so why not do what I love?” she says. For their work at HerCampus, which is now profitable, Hanger, Kaplan, and Wang recently were named to Inc. magazine’s “30 Under 30 Coolest Young Entrepreneurs” list. Perhaps because of their stage in life, college entrepreneurs are particularly keen at spotting business opportunities. When Derek Pacqué was a senior at Indiana University, he was at a night cl