Abstract
This collection brings together 16 well-chosen essays discussing the state of the art of university-wide entrepreneurship education programmes. Twenty-nine authors from universities in five countries with various disciplinary backgrounds discuss the opportunities and universal challenges in implementing entrepreneurship education outside the business school, bringing it into the sciences, performing arts, social sciences, humanities and liberal arts.
The book is structured around three themes which guide the reader through the complex field of current approaches in entrepreneurship education programmes: (1) ‘philosophy and theory’, which refers to building legitimacy and an intellectual foundation for the fusion with, or integration of, entrepreneurship education into other cross-campus approaches; (2) ‘planning and implementation’, which discusses the politics and processes of implementing entrepreneurial initiatives outside the business school; and (3) ‘intersections and practice’, which gives examples for, and insight into, successfully managed programme approaches.
The dominant public perception of entrepreneurship as setting up enterprises and following capitalistic attitudes still seems to be influenced essentially by the classic but rather narrow perspective of the business school. This results in widespread misunderstandings about the nature of a more holistic approach to entrepreneurship. Perceptions that entrepreneurship education does not fit the traditional norms, behaviours and practices of university members seem to stand to reason. In Part 1, breaking this narrow understanding and instead reflecting the wide concept of entrepreneurship applied throughout the handbook, Green (Chapter 2) might irritate readers when simply defining entrepreneurship as ‘freedom’ and increasingly standing for a mindset of generating beneficial change. ‘Intellectual entrepreneurship’, as an educational philosophy in which academics are viewed as innovators and ‘agents of change’, could reconcile the humanist traditions of the university with their relevance in the world outside the ivory tower, as Beckman and Cherwitz (Chapter 3) argue. Entrepreneurship, then, plays an essential role in higher education and can be seen as a concept that helps organizations and individuals ‘to cope with, enjoy and perhaps create uncertainty and complexity’ (Gibb, 2005: 4). Based on this, Krueger (Chapter 4) shows that under a constructivist paradigm of education, and with the usage of entrepreneurial learning approaches, great educational outcomes can be achieved even (or in particular) outside the business school. By fostering the synergy of students’ and teachers’ cognitive diversity, and shifting the educational paradigm from fact-based learning to interdisciplinary problem-based learning, a new campus-wide age of entrepreneurial activities can be initiated. As Gustafson (Chapter 5) points out in his at times quite humorous essay on entrepreneurship as a liberal art, cooperation but confrontation seems to be the advice to achieve this.
Part 2 of the handbook is based on the question of how a concept of university-wide and interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education can be implemented. Taking into consideration a confirmed weakness in the academic legitimacy of entrepreneurship, Mendes and Kehoe (Chapter 6) propose a 4D strategic management framework that constitutes a dynamic process from strategy formulation to strategy implementation. Within this framework, entrepreneurial needs are identified, entrepreneurship education is provided, entrepreneurship-related activities are sponsored and entrepreneurship awareness is continuously enhanced. Integrating stakeholders into the process seems to be a promising way to define entrepreneurship in an acceptable way for the university community. Hynes et al. (Chapter 7) point out that increasing legitimacy for cross-campus entrepreneurship education can be gained by designing programmes that prepare graduates to work effectively in today’s dynamic business and technological environments. The demand for change in conceptual content and structure and the successful implementation of new teaching tools, then, depends on acquiring entrepreneurially oriented staff. They need to be able to cope with totally different learning conditions in which the traditional teacher–student relation is abandoned for the benefit of the teacher designing exploratory learning environments. This also includes changes in individual role models. Such an approach could be meaningfully promoted by campus-wide ‘champions’, who have faced the change successfully. With regard to teachers‘ high ‘risk’ in changing from traditional didactic to enterprising learning methods, a new approach must provide faculty with adequate methods to accomplish their classroom goals and broader educational outcomes, in order to achieve campus-wide legitimacy. Here, Macosko et al. (Chapter 9) suggest five teaching strategies as an essence of their three case studies of teaching entrepreneurship through science-based teams and projects: directed discussion, case-based learning, problem-based learning, team-based learning and project-oriented learning.
This experience-based learning approach leads to some philosophical objections to the ‘entrepreneurship–liberal arts’ connection, as Shaver (Chapter 10) points out in her opening essay for Part 3. Aristotle’s distinction between the arts as an understanding of universal truth and experience – and as practical knowledge at an individual level – might be the most obvious impediment. Despite this, Shaver concludes her contribution on a positive note about what might be gained by each area when connecting disciplines. Janssen et al. (Chapter 11) employ a ‘level of learning’ conceptual model in order to answer the question of how interdisciplinarity can be distinguished from multidisciplinarity, which is by level of learning difficulty. Entrepreneurship as a theoretical body of knowledge is by nature an interdisciplinary field.
So far, the handbook has assembled material on possible conceptual frameworks and processes in order to introduce entrepreneurship education across disciplines. This leaves the question of how the real effectiveness of an entrepreneurship education programme can be measured and evaluated. This is a reasonable question, especially for non-business educational environments, where the legitimacy of entrepreneurship might be more critically debated than within business schools in terms of financial resources and curricular relevance. Based upon the theory of planned behaviour, Ajzen et al. (Chapter 15) introduce a methodology to assess entrepreneurship education programmes. Their diverse and partially insignificant findings of three empirical studies result in questions for further research interest, such as to what extent entrepreneurship education programmes should consider the individual background of attendees to guarantee a deep level of involvement during the course and the best possible benefit for the individual. These results, among others, illustrate that although many important questions have been discussed so far, more are waiting to be answered. In this regard, Hines’ closing chapter (Chapter 16) may be seen as a conclusion for the whole book. With his appeal to building campuses, cultures and curricula for innovation, he believes that collaborations between the liberal arts and the entrepreneurial spirit can lead to new synergies thus, helping today’s universities to face challenges in an increasingly complex environment. Creativity, innovation and clarity of vision are no longer important to entrepreneurs alone, but they are required of academic officers at every level if universities are to adapt to the future. In this way, this handbook is a comprehensive guideline for educators and school administrators, and a valuable collection of perceptive experiences of pioneers in expanding the topic beyond the business school.