DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Students gather in the common area of the McClelland Hall yesterday. The McGuire Entrepreneurship Program in the Eller College of Management placed eighth in the top 25 listing of the best entrepreneurial undergraduate schools in the country.

For the third time in 2004, a program in the Eller College of Management at the UA was ranked by a national publication as one of the best in the nation.

The Princeton Review and Forbes.com put the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program in eighth place in their inaugural "Top 25 Most Entrepreneurial Undergraduate Schools in the Country."

Gary Libecap, a UA economics professor and director of the Karl Eller Center and McGuire Entrepreneurship Program, said the program has been consistently ranked in the top 10 by several national publications.

According to Forbes.com, the criteria for ranking programs included experiential learning methods, tutoring, and successful alumni entrepreneurial businesses.

Libecap said the program has been ranked nationally for the last 15 years and the program began at Eller in 1984.

"The key thing is we have been moving steadily up ever since," Libecap said.

Libecap said one of the reasons the program is recognized nationally is its comprehensive nature.

"We have so many courses," Libecap said.

In addition to the program's undergraduate major and graduate program, Libecap said the program has courses geared to majors in law, engineering and science.

"We have many opportunities to bring to students from across campus into the program," Libecap said.

Sherry Hoskinson, associate director of the entrepreneurship program, said it is important to recognize that each publication has a different set of criteria for judging programs.

"They are three vastly different perspectives," Hoskinson said.

Hoskinson said The Princeton Review is regarded highly in college circles, and the new ranking was based on different methodologies than the rankings by other publications.

"The Princeton survey was geared towards entrepreneurial environments." Hoskinson said.

In August, the "America's Best Colleges 2005" issue of U.S. News & World Report ranked the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program ninth in the nation among public programs.

In April, Entrepreneur magazine ranked the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program as second in the nation. It was released in its second annual "Top 100 Entrepreneurial Colleges and Universities" edition.