He Built Babson Into A Premier Entrepreneurship School. Now Stephen Spinelli Is Retiring

Stephen Spinelli, Babson College president, will retire in June 2027, the school announced today (June 1)

Just seven weeks ago, Stephen Spinelli was speaking with Poets&Quants, brushing off the end of Babson College’s historic 32-year reign atop the U.S. News & World Report entrepreneurship ranking with the kind of line only a lifelong entrepreneur could deliver.

“I want to be number one for 132 years,” he said. “I want them to only rank 2 through 500.”

Then, with characteristic candor, he said something even more revealing: “When they first started the rankings, there were maybe half a dozen schools that taught entrepreneurship. Now you can’t find half a dozen that don’t.

“We built our competition. But I think the world is a better place.”

THE LEADER BABSON NEEDED

Stephen Spinelli, Babson College president: “We built our competition. But I think the world is a better place”

That exchange, it turns out, was one of Spinelli’s last extended public conversations before Monday’s announcement that he will retire at the close of the 2026-2027 academic year, ending a presidency that reshaped both Babson and the discipline it has long claimed as its own.

Spinelli, Babson’s 14th president, arrived at the school in 2019. Before turning to higher education, he had co-founded Jiffy Lube International, scaling it to more than 1,000 service centers. He later led Philadelphia University and then guided its merger with Thomas Jefferson University, a transaction that produced a new transdisciplinary institution and earned him the chancellorship of the combined entity.

At Babson, he had a harder job: not building something new, but stewarding something irreplaceable.

His tenure coincided with the most turbulent stretch in modern higher education history. He navigated the Covid-19 pandemic without the enrollment hemorrhaging that hobbled peer institutions, steered the college to its highest bond ratings ever, and launched the Babson ELevates campaign with a $750 million goal – the most ambitious fundraising effort in the school’s century-long history.

Under Spinelli’s watch, Babson was named the No. 2 best college in the United States by The Wall Street Journal for two consecutive years, driven by its strength in career outcomes and return on investment. The school expanded online and executive programming, launched the Arthur M. Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and added institutes spanning health innovation, technology, franchising, and real estate. Record applications and more than 60 new scholarships broadened access.

THE FIELD SPINELLI HELPED TO BUILD

But perhaps the most honest accounting of Spinelli’s legacy isn’t measured in bond ratings or campaign totals. It’s visible in the very U.S. News rankings disruption that cost Babson its No. 1 entrepreneurship title this spring – when a redesigned ballot system exposed just how thoroughly the field Babson once owned has been colonized by competitors.

That shift, Spinelli told P&Q in April, was the point. Babson had spent decades training faculty, building curriculum, and pushing entrepreneurship into the mainstream of business education. The result is a discipline that is broader, deeper, and more competitive than it was when the rankings began. Losing the top spot to a field you helped create is a different kind of accomplishment.

“The schools ahead of us are great schools,” he said. “We’re four, not 104.”

He will serve through June 30, 2027, as the Board of Trustees conducts a global search for his successor in partnership with Russell Reynolds Associates. Board chair Jeffery S. Perry praised Spinelli for pressing Babson’s competitive advantages through challenging higher education headwinds while sustaining the shared governance model that includes faculty.

“Serving as president of Babson College has been one of the great honors of my life,” Spinelli says in his retirement announcement. “This community is driven by a shared belief in the power of entrepreneurial leadership to create social and economic value impacting communities everywhere. Together, we have built on Babson’s strengths, expanded our reach, and positioned the College for continued impact in a rapidly evolving world. I am deeply grateful to our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and partners for all we have accomplished.”

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