But what happens when a college student has an entrepreneurial itch that just can’t be scratched within the confines of an institution of higher learning?  When I was writing Upstarts!, I heard many stories of students leaving school to focus on their companies. Among them are Tom Szaky (TerraCycle), Ben Kaufman (Quirky), Caleb Sima (SPI Dynamics), Brendan Ciecko (Ten Minute Media), Brad Weinberg and Rajiv Kumar (Shape Up the Nation). Some were clearly not academically inclined from the get go; others just could not manage a company and school at the same time, and the former took precedent.   I doubt that any of them regret their decision, but I wish that they had not been forced to make it. And for that, I blame the colleges and universities that they attended and left.