27% of U.S. university entrepreneurship programs expect fewer financial resources next year.
Of those feeling the squeeze, 40% are already cutting or reducing programs they’ve run for years. One in three are slashing food and marketing budgets. 35% have hiring freezes in place. And 61% of all respondents—not just the ones under pressure—say they’re actively looking for new donors.
Those numbers come from the 2025 State of Entrepreneurship Education survey, conducted by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) in partnership with USC’s Marshall School of Business. Coworks did not participate in this research. But one finding in particular caught our attention, because it points to an opportunity that most centers are only beginning to explore.
33% of public university programs facing financial pressure say they’re actively looking at revenue-generating models. And the most frequently mentioned strategy? Charging fees for access to the physical infrastructure they already have: maker spaces, incubators, coworking areas, and event venues.
In other words, the asset is already there. The question is whether the systems are in place to monetize it without creating more work than it’s worth.
The average program is juggling more than two systems. And a significant number of the people running these programs say, openly, that they don’t trust the accuracy of their own data.
The GCEC survey paints a detailed picture of how entrepreneurship centers are funded and where the pressure is coming from. A few data points that matter:
Private schools lean on endowments. Public schools lean on the institution. That fundamental difference in funding structure means public programs are more exposed when university budgets tighten. And those are exactly the programs most likely to be exploring revenue generation.
33% of public schools are exploring revenue-generating programs. Only 8% of private schools say the same. The gap makes sense: endowments provide a buffer that government funding doesn’t.
Advisory boards are already a small revenue lever. About 70% of private schools and 44% of public schools have advisory boards, and U.S. programs are willing to ask members for buy-ins of $2,500 to $10,000. But that only goes so far.
Ecosystem cost-sharing is on the rise. 33% of U.S. programs are looking to share costs with community partners as a way to sustain programming they can no longer fully fund internally.
Physical infrastructure is seen as both a burden and an opportunity. Survey respondents described incubators, maker spaces, and accelerators as “very resource intensive.” But the programs that have them are already looking at fee-based access as a revenue stream. The programs that don’t have them are wondering whether to cut what they can’t afford.
The through line is clear: centers need revenue beyond donor checks and institutional budgets, and the most tangible asset many of them have is their physical space.
Here’s the gap. A center director can look at an underused maker space and think, “We should be charging community members to use this.” That’s the right instinct. But executing on it requires infrastructure that most programs don’t have:
If you’re running your center on Excel and Google Drive—as the GCEC data tells us the majority surveyed are—none of that is in place. And building it from scratch, with a patchwork of tools, is exactly the kind of resource-intensive project a financially strained program can’t take on.
This is the paradox: the centers most in need of new revenue are the least equipped to operationalize it.
Coworks was built to manage exactly this kind of operation.
The platform is used ny coworking spaces and flexible workspaces every day—places where multiple membership types, room bookings, billing, access control, and community management all have to work together seamlessly. An entrepreneurship center running fee-based programs has the same operational needs.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Membership tiers that reflect how your space actually gets used. Students might get free access through the university. Alumni pay a monthly rate. Local startups buy day passes. Corporate partners get a premium membership with reserved space and priority booking. Coworks lets you set up as many tiers as you need, each with its own pricing, access rules, and permissions.
Self-service booking that fills your space without filling your inbox. When community members can book a desk, a meeting room, or a maker space slot from their phone, you stop being the bottleneck. The space fills itself. And the data on who’s using what gets captured automatically.
Automated billing that runs in the background. Recurring memberships, one-time bookings, overage charges—all of it gets invoiced and collected through Stripe without anyone on your team touching a spreadsheet. If you’ve ever chased a late payment by hand, you know how much time this saves.
Access control that keeps your space secure and your users independent. Coworks integrates with door access systems like Verkada, Kisi, and Doordeck. Members unlock doors with their phones. When a membership expires or a day pass runs out, access turns off automatically. No key cards to manage, no security gaps.
Revenue reporting you can hand to your dean. Every transaction, every membership, every booking generates data. You can show leadership exactly how much revenue the space is producing, who’s using it, and how utilization trends over time. That’s the kind of number that protects your budget.
You don’t need to reinvent your center to start generating revenue. Most programs already have the physical assets. The question is which model fits your institution and your community. Here are five that we see working:
1. Community makerspace memberships. Open your maker space to local entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses on a monthly or annual membership basis. Students keep free access. External members pay a fee that covers consumables and contributes to overhead.
2. Day passes for coworking and hot desks. If your center has open workspace, sell day passes to alumni, community members, or visiting entrepreneurs. It’s low-commitment revenue that also builds your pipeline for longer memberships.
3. Meeting room and event space rentals. That conference room sitting empty on Friday afternoons? Rent it to local businesses, nonprofit boards, or startup teams. Hourly or half-day pricing keeps the barrier low. Automated booking keeps the admin load near zero.
4. Corporate partnership tiers. Offer local companies a premium membership that includes reserved desks, priority event access, mentoring opportunities, and branding in your space. This works especially well when you can position the partnership as access to student talent.
5. Program fees for accelerators and incubators. If you’re running a structured incubator or accelerator, a modest cohort fee—even a small one—signals seriousness and generates revenue. Coworks handles cohort billing alongside everything else, so it’s not a separate administrative lift.
None of these require a massive capital investment. They require operational infrastructure. That’s the piece Coworks provides.
The GCEC survey also found that 33% of U.S. programs are pursuing ecosystem cost-sharing—partnering with community organizations to share the cost of infrastructure and programming.
This is a smart strategy, and it gets even smarter when you have the systems to support it. A space management platform lets you give partner organizations their own access, their own booking permissions, and their own billing relationship without tangling up your internal operations. Everyone uses the same space. Everyone gets their own clean data. And you can show your institution exactly how the partnership is reducing net costs.
Cost-sharing without clean systems is a headache. Cost-sharing with the right platform is a growth strategy.
I want to address something I know some center directors are thinking: charging for access feels wrong when your mission is to serve students.
I get that. And I want to be clear: nobody is suggesting you start charging students for the programs that are core to your educational mission. The revenue opportunity isn’t about monetizing what you already do for students. It’s about opening up your underutilized physical assets to the broader community in a way that generates income, builds connections, and actually strengthens the ecosystem around your center.
A local startup founder paying $150 a month for a coworking membership at your center isn’t taking something away from students. They’re adding to the community. They’re a potential mentor, a potential employer for your graduates, and a source of revenue that funds the very programs you’re worried about protecting.
Revenue generation, done right, makes the mission more sustainable, not less.
In the first article in this series, I shared that I’m a product of a university entrepreneurship center. The center I walked into as an undergrad is the reason I’m building Coworks today.
When I read the GCEC data about programs cutting back, reducing hours, or wondering whether they can afford to keep their maker space open, I think about what would have happened if my center had been forced to make those cuts.
How many students like me would have lost the one place on campus where someone treated their idea like it mattered?
That’s why I’m so passionate about this particular problem. The physical spaces these centers operate aren’t just line items on a budget. They’re where the magic happens. And they have more earning potential than most people realize. They just need the right systems to unlock it.
If you run a university entrepreneurship center and you’ve been thinking about revenue but don’t know where to start, I’d genuinely love to have that conversation. This is what we do.
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