Is Academic Entrepreneurialism a Universal Concept? New Ideas and Insights From Contextualisation Beyond East and West

Abstract

This paper considers the conceptualisation of ‘academic entrepreneurialism’ and develops new ideas and insights by contextualising the concept. It critically reviews the conceptual literature of academic entrepreneurialism which is dominated by research and conceptualisation by the West and reflects its implications for understanding academic entrepreneurialism in China. After that, it answers the key question: Is academic entrepreneurialism a universal concept? By academic entrepreneurialism, it refers to the phenomenon that universities are willing to supply knowledge for capitalising new opportunities, managing risks and maximising revenues, reputation, or human capital in response to the demands for education, research and knowledge solutions by the knowledge society and economy, as well as developing new markets for their knowledge-based services and goods. This paper draws on global perspective and the case of Chinese higher education, and engages in conceptual discussions about the applied universality of academic entrepreneurialism and its limitations of making sense of cultural uniqueness in various contexts. We argue that academic entrepreneurialism is not a universal and all-encompassing template but the beginning of constitutive, continuous and complex transformation of institutional reasoning of different universities across the world. Not taking the culturalist presuppositions, new ideas from this paper may be helpful for reconsidering, redesigning and reorganising research, education and engagement of universities beyond East and West so as to foster their self-understanding in the entrepreneurial age and future-oriented development.

The East-West framework gains currency and arouses debate as a conceptual model in the literature of humanities and social sciences (Deutsch, 1991; Lama et al., 2012; Offe, 1996) as well as in educational scholarship (Lin, 2013; O'Sullivan & Guo, 2010; Rizvi, 1997). The field of higher education studies is also concerned about the influence of civilisations, cultures and institutional organisations and contexts on the approaches to knowledge, education and research in the East and West (Adamson et al., 2012; Hayhoe & Pan, 2016). However, the notion of ‘East-West’ is a problematic one because the frameworks it implies are criticised as static, closed-ended, stereotypical and even colonial (Adamson et al., 2012; Rizvi, 1997; Said, 1978). The social constructions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ exist as the shadow of each other (Bauman, 2004) and they are the cultural logic and the way of the West in describing, representing and relating to its Other (Said, 1978). The East, being the dependent Other, imagines itself through the mindframe and world view imposed and available. Encounters of people, organisations, governments from ‘East’ and ‘West’ manifest the both imaginary entities and reinforce the dichotomisation of ‘East’ and ‘West’. However, in the age of globalisation, people cannot actually know cultures and social practices in their authentic form. Rather, hybridity (Clifford, 1988; Hall, 1993) and continuous hybridisation are the essential characteristics of a global condition (Rizvi, 1997), which problematises and transcends the East-West divide. Social institutions, alongside people inhabiting them, interact with different cultures and social practices so they adapt, learn, rethink and recombine with new and hybrid forms when developing ever-evolving practices in their local contexts. The local is not static but always transformed as an outcome of engagement with changing global economy, globalisation of technological transformation and changing world order. Perspectives, understanding and insights derived from contextualisation are power in shedding light on and filling blind spots in existing concepts. It is because new hybrid formations emerging from ongoing global-local dynamics are highly context-specific. Contextualisation can help researchers transcend the limitations of understanding social phenomena and individual behaviours through indigenous perspectives and making sense of alternative routes to modernity (Cheung, 2012).

As for the formation and developmental pathways of modern universities, particularly those of non-Western systems, they are responsive, learning and adaptive - if not innovative - processes of adopting and combing indigenous with foreign structures, practices, ideas and values, resulting in a ‘reindigenised’ hybrid (Neubauer, Shin, & Hawkins, 2013). However, the extant literature reports the common patterns (Clark, 1998, 2004; Kirby, 2005; Marginson & Considine, 2000) or even global convergence (Etzkowitz et al., 2000, 2008) of higher education organisational transformation into a form conceptualised as the ‘entrepreneurial university’ against the backdrop of globalisation of entrepreneurial societies (Audretsch, 2014; Guerrero & Urbano, 2012) and globalising academic capitalism (Cantwell & Kauppinen, 2014; Kauppinen, 2012; Tang, 2014a). The rise of a global knowledge-based economy and society has created new opportunities, demands for knowledge and changing expectations and pressure on universities to engage with ever updating economic and social conditions. To some extent, universities around the world are becoming more similar in terms of their missions, aspirations, planning, actions, organisational structures, funding models, and so on. Taking that perspective, there is a trend of organisational convergence and isomorphism by which universities adopt similar practices and structures responding to external expectations and opportunities. As the concept of entrepreneurial university is presented as a fait accompli of university development, it tends to narrow the imagination of what the University can be in the future.

The existing literature takes the western-led conceptualisation of academic entrepreneurialism for granted as most research applies it uncritically for national or local case studies. Few studies review the conceptualisation critically and relate it for analysis with research focussing on contextualisation. This paper aims to fill the knowledge gap. Drawing from international perspectives and the case of the Chinese University, this paper problematises the East versus West framework and engages in conceptual discussions about academic entrepreneurialism and its applied universality. Through the example of the Chinese University, the paper shows the usefulness of contextualisation and answers the key research question: is academic entrepreneurialism a universal concept? The remaining of the paper is organised as follows: Section 2 will define academic entrepreneurialism and introduces its key ideas based on the philosophical and sociological literatures of higher education. Section 3 will offer an overview and key ideas concerning the impact of academic entrepreneurialism on academic life and changing forms of scholarship globally. Section 4 moves the discussions onward from conceptualisation to contextualisation through the case of China. Section 5 discusses the question “Is there such a thing as ‘Chinese academic entrepreneurialism'?” while Section 6 concludes the paper by questioning the open-ended possibilities of academic entrepreneurialism and stating the importance of self-understanding of the University in an era of crises, change and entrepreneurialism.

What Is Academic Entrepreneurialism?

Throughout the long history of the University, the contemporary age has seen reform and institutional transformation more and at a faster rate than ever. Since the worldwide development of neoliberalism in the 1990s, higher education policies function as social technologies to reform and reshape the life of university in the domains of access, accountability and finance. Given its exchange value, knowledge and its generation processes make quantifiable impacts on life in society and universities (Ball, 2015). The conceptualisation of academic entrepreneurialism (Barnett, 2005; Deem; 2001; Kweik, 2012; Tang, 2014b) is likely to offer some explanatory power to make sense of higher education change including changing policies, practices, everyday interactions, and subjectivities in academia. Modelled as a market of competing institutions, higher education produces research and knowledge which can create new values for application, educational service and knowledge transfer in the knowledge economy. By academic entrepreneurialism, it refers to the phenomenon that universities are willing to seek to capitalise new opportunities, manage risks and maximise revenues, reputation, or human capital in response to the demands for education, research and knowledge solutions by the knowledge society and economy, as well as developing new markets for their knowledge-based services and goods. Academic entrepreneurialism induces and fosters higher education institutions and academic profession to engage with and contribute to a system of strategies which establish, empower and enhance institutional, group and individual capacities in the context of academic capitalism (Jessop, 2017). The entrepreneurial development and trends in turn shape and reinforce academic capitalism.

Despite its debatable character, academic entrepreneurialism came into place due to the involvement and willingness of universities, being socially distinctive organisations in world society (Marginson, 2007). Central to the unique organisational constituents of higher education institutions are their knowledge-forming, flexible and ‘learning’ characteristics and social functions. As a centre of learning across different disciplines, fields and subjects, the University is comprehensive by nature and multi-functional in practice. More importantly, it is self-reproducing through doctoral education. We can consider the University as an ‘innovative learning organisation’ which ever learns, adapts, evolves and moves forward, onwards and upwards. It embodies resilience to changes, challenges or even critics.

Academic entrepreneurialism promotes permeability of higher education systems as facilitated by open boundaries for knowledge transfer through cross-sector collaboration and inter-professional learning. International rise of innovation-driven development and the emergence of global science (or known as ‘one science’) make university research and knowledge useful for competitions and capital accumulations in the globalising knowledge economy. Higher education has become more open to commodification and positions students as ‘consumers’ (Naidoo & Whitty, 2014) for their self-enterprising projects (Tang & Zhang, 2022). Meanwhile, amidst the rise of global crises, universities face the knowledge demands for contributions to global sustainable development goals (SDGs) (McCowan, 2019; Nhamo & Mjimba, 2020). Competing ideologies between neoliberalism and liberalism shape the life of universities within which the values of human capital, human rights and social justice are altogether stressed (Zapp et al.,2021). There are university accountability practices and quality assurance bureaucracy which govern the innovative, risk-taking and entrepreneurial activities by academics. Creation of education markets is usually a practical way to increase the income sources of higher education institutions among the portfolio of income diversification. At the ‘entrepreneurial turn’ of university development (Goldstein, 2010; Tang, 2018), academic research, scholarship, education and university engagement in the society are frequently understood and discoursed as important activities of the knowledge economy under the governance of unified and global principles of actions and change.

Capital and competitions are the lifeblood of academic entrepreneurialism. Capitalisation, accumulation and entrepreneurial activation of financial, intellectual, social and cultural capital of universities, academic units and individual scholars redefine what it means to research, teach, educate and learn. Strategic planning, annual reviews, institutional branding, university rankings, diversification of income sources, performance-related remuneration and resource allocations, branch campuses, and various kinds of public-private partnerships for creating impact and innovation are common activities and business in university life (Ball, 2015). More essentially, when enterprising the university, its intellectual, social capital are being put at risk (Barnett, 2010). The undertaking of risk involves, consequently, reputational capital because the reputation of a university itself can be used as a lever to attract resources and funding. At the outset of the ‘entrepreneurial turn’ of university development, mainly less resourceful institutions and new universities, for example polytechnics-turned universities and universities of science and technology, became entrepreneurial (Stensaker & Benner, 2013) as they bore less risk in reputational capital. In the name of innovating the missions of universities (for the new era, the new century and the future at large), they are less concerned about the issue of ‘mission risk’ (Barnett, 2010, p.34). Entering the 21st century, higher education systems are increasingly aligned and embedded in the innovation systems and knowledge economies. New prestige emerges when leading research universities, which are usually recognised as world class or flagship universities, respond to the demands for impactful knowledge transfer or groundbreaking knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. The trend introduces a new norm in understanding the missions and reputation of universities. Academic entrepreneurialism creates new value and capitalisation and redefinition of university reputation in the age of technology-led innovation. Every university aspires to develop its own unique identity, or ‘brand’, with the establishment of public relation, communication and marketing related units or departments. The processes and outcomes of marketisation, commercialisation and capitalisation altogether place academic life and forms of scholarship into substantial transformations.

The Global Impact of Academic Entrepreneurialism on Academic Life and Changing Forms of Scholarship

Academic life in the condition of rising entrepreneurialism involves scholars to think, translate, represent and promote their knowledge work in ways up to date. To a large extent, the nature and process of changing higher education can be made better sense of with the corporate logic rather than the academic logic (Vican et al., 2020). The changes condition academics to adapt with an “academically entrepreneurial” perspective which is foreign to the education and academic training they acquired (Barnett, 2010, p.51). As they envisage to bring about change, their time perspective and horizons orient more to the future than the past. Research, education and scholarship for the future are those for an unknown world to come. The future is uncertain not just due to the complexity of interconnectedness of systems, nations and organisations, their creative disruption by innovative technology, but also because there are so many different ways to anticipate and imagine the future world, especially amidst the rise of global crises. They are so complex that we are unable to confidently explain all the issues we face. The future represents a world where judgments or decisions must be made with inadequate information or evidence that warrants predictable outcomes (Barnett, 2012). The diversity and complexity of competing worldviews of the future presents unique challenges and opportunities for university educational tasks and research. The developmental processes involve a great deal of risks and require even more for ensuring work transparency and accountability.

What underpins the project of enterprising a university are the dual processes of risk taking and accountability. Notwithstanding paradoxical it sounds, bureaucracy aligns sensibly with university entrepreneurialism and innovation (Kattel et al., 2022). Bureaucracy of common procedures and accountability is a useful organisational tool to cope with, utilise and capitalise risk. Academic lives and risk-taking processes are therefore made transparent and accountable. Barnett (2010) further suggests that “the corporate university arises on the foundations of the bureaucratic university and it emerges in both suffocating and empowering versions” (p.56). University leaders’ capacity to respond to entrepreneurial opportunities and calculated risks depends on how much information they have at their hands. Accountability and accounting systems of higher transparency offer institutional leadership more information and enhance their entrepreneurial capacity. University bureaucracy and managerialism are, as a result, natural responses to the organisational needs and adaptation for innovation and entrepreneurial transformation. The literature has reported extensive impact of university managerialism on academic profession and academic life (Davis et al., 2016; Teichler et al., 2013).

Apart from bureaucratisation and managerialism, academic entrepreneurialism also has an impact on academic life and scholarship as universities are taking up new missions. Before the entrepreneurial turn, tasks like devising university’s strategic planning for the future, formulating strategic and ‘impactful’ research agenda by academic units and individual researchers, or designing an academic programme, curriculum pedagogy that make students ‘future-ready’ for the unknown world are not the usual practices of universities. The new businesses of universities, including their offices overseeing quality assurance and institutional accountability, require new language and vocabulary to adequately convey the concepts and perspectives entrepreneurially invented so as to capture the research and pedagogical accomplishments. Creation, circulation and co-evolution of the new language for discoursing academic entrepreneurialism have become part of the academic life embedded in the future-oriented development and institutional change of the University. Among many, ‘entrepreneurial university’ has become a common language of higher education in contemporary time (Shattock, 2009), circulated by ‘entrepreneurial academics’ as carriers of university evolution. The interplay between entrepreneurial language, academics and the agency of university actorhood fuel the evolution and institutional change of the University. We will discuss the issues from the perspective of contextualisation and the case of China in the next section.

From Conceptualisation to Contextualisation: The Case of China

Academic entrepreneurialism is not static as the result of neoliberal change of higher education. Rather, it is the start of constitutive, continuous and complex transformation of institutional reasoning of the university. The university will evolve into a different kind which the world does not yet have the language to describe or understand. The discourse of academic entrepreneurialism appears to imply ‘entrepreneurial university’ to be the universal and all-encompassing template of most universities because the unitary new reality facing them seems inescapable. However, differences are more than similarities in visible performative change and underlying constitutive transformation when different types of university are ‘enterprising’ themselves and navigating their own ways of being a university in the 21st century (Barnett, 2010, p.41; p.43).

Notwithstanding the problematic nature of the East-West framework, the cultural foundations and processes of knowledge creation, scholarship and intellectual framework affect the reasoning about the relationships between humans, society, state-government, nature and the world. Eastern philosophies, for example Confucianism, consider intellectual development as human development, of both scholars and students, for the growth of personhood, deontological capacity, and ethical wisdom. The development of the intellect and cultivation of selfhood are not just for personal moral perfection but also for contributing to a benevolent, free and equitable secular world (Li, 2020). The Confucian culture attaches high value and pays high regard to education. Families and parents are, therefore, keen on and desiring private investment in higher and more prestigious education for their children. The individual and collective aspirations and behaviours create the cultural phenomenon of a prevalence of ‘educational desire’ (Kipnis, 2011; Tang & Dang, 2022; Yang, 2016). The state, public universities and their private counterparts can use the resources provided and networked by the social institution of families in education and research (Zha, 2011) for pursuing the instrumental value of higher education in institutional and national strategic developments.

In many nations in the East, the presence of strong state underpins the university-society relationships whereas centralisation and control are legitimately received regarding the role of the state and government in the sphere of higher education. Alongside the entrepreneurial trends driven by the globalising academic capitalism, East Asian ‘state instrumentalism’ towards higher education remodels universities as quasi-firms in a way that state-led centralised control is maintained (Marginson, 2011). According to Chinese tradition and contemporary governance, the state is placed in a superior position in relation to the society and market. Unlike the Anglo-American tradition in the West which highlights the separation of the state, civil society and market, the state government in China has a comprehensive role in all aspects in the society including higher education (Yang, 2022) and the role of universities in the national innovation system (Yi et al., 2022). State-guided market economy, managed academic capitalism (Tang, 2014a), social harmony, cohesion and stability by good coordination and control are probably the uniqueness of academic entrepreneurialism in China.

However, different encounters, collective experiences and approaches to the West shape the development of different higher education systems across the East. For example, higher education in the Chinese mainland, Japan and Taiwan have long attempted to balance indigenous and Western traditions. In contrast, Hong Kong and Singapore have shown greater interest in enterprising their higher education system, as part of the modern governance structure, than understanding, balancing with or reserving their traditions if any. According to Loke et al. (2017), Singaporean universities have never drawn inspiration from Confucianism despite the significant proportion of ethnic Chinese in the national population. The cases of Hong Kong and Singapore reflect the claim that East Asian universities are largely transplants of the Anglo-American university model (Altbach et al., 2004; Yang, 2019).

For the case of China, the history of Chinese universities demonstrates well the open-ended possibilities of university evolution and academic entrepreneurialism. Throughout the contemporary centuries, the Chinese university evolved with influences, learning and policy borrowing from the Japanese model in the 1890s, the European model in the 1910s, the American model in the 1920s, and the Soviet model in the 1950s (Hayhoe, 1996). A Chinese model of the university is discoursed as one which is essentially different from the West and maintaining the cultural characteristics derived from Confucianism and Legalism (Zha, 2021). Classical Confucianism places higher education in an important position for individual and national development (Li, 2009). In practice, Confucian values and anthropocosmic worldview have a significant influence on Chinese approach to higher education (Yang, 2022) and China’s university governance (Yang, 2020). Highlighting statecraft, that is the methods of “managing affairs and dealing men”, the Confucian-Legalist ideology establishes a social governing framework which endorses the government’s power to centralise and strategically mobilise national resources for performing national goals with astounding effectiveness and efficiency. It is the national ideology, but not market forces, which promotes and emphasises the imperative of strong state and instrumentalism in Chinese higher education (Zha, 2021).

The tradition of Confucian-Legalism that constitutes the cultural foundation of the national ideology enables the unprecedented growth of contemporary Chinese higher education. Apart from an impressive higher-education expansion in terms of the number of post-secondary institutions and student enrollments, China has also always been keen on establishing its international status in higher education worldwide. With close and symbiotic relationship with the government, Chinese universities advance their research achievements and world class status in international rankings within a short time in compliance with the state-led ideology for national revival (Li, 2009). In other words, universities, as rigorously controlled state institutions, are indeed instrumental to the contemporary developmental and political agenda of the Chinese strong state (Li, 2012; Zha, 2021).

China’s internationalisation is among the important strategies of the developmental agenda. Alongside Sino-foreign collaborations and joint ventures for educational programmes, research and innovation projects as well as branch campuses, the academic enterprise of the Chinese University is also keen on attracting world class researchers, including overseas Chinese returnees from top research universities of the West, to advance its academic profession. Moreover, Chinese international students comprise a significant part of the student population of advanced higher education systems worldwide while China is one of the nations receiving and hosting the most number of international students.

Yet China takes a unique approach for establishing its relationship and vigorous engagement with the world while sustaining its national independence (Yang, 2019). Meanwhile, the issues of academic freedom and institutional autonomy are not understood the same way as in the western university context. Independence from the state is less important than the role of universities in serving the nation and society (Li, 2012). The Chinese University maintains its position of ‘self-mastery’ (Pan, 2009) and responds to emerging entrepreneurial opportunities and demands for knowledge in service of the national knowledge society and innovation economy.

Is There Such a Thing as ‘Chinese Academic Entrepreneurialism'?

Unlike the trends among universities in the Anglo-American systems, China sees no indication of declining government fiscal support for universities, especially leading national universities. Steady economic growth sustains decent investment in the educational system and research infrastructure. Entrepreneurialism in Chinese universities has less to do with enhancing institutional self-reliance (according to the conceptualisation of entrepreneurial university by Burton Clark, 1998) but more for embracing top-down strategic directions for national entrepreneurship. Intellectual creativity and academic innovation, as they are presented in academic entrepreneurialism in China, do not merely originate from individual academics’ initiatives and scholarship.

We can better understand the contextual characteristics of academic entrepreneurialism in China by reviewing its educational development. In fact, before the national establishment of the People’s Republic of China, private schools made up about two-fifths of all schools (Tang, 2014a). Private education was well received and commonly practiced before the nationalisation process starting from the 1950s. All private schools were converted into public institutions for the purpose of nation building. Nonetheless, upon the ‘open door policy’ which initiated openness to economic development since 1978, support for private education, on the ground that it should be regulated and not driven by profit, was revealed through the Education Law (Article 25) in 1992 and the government document “Outline of the Reform and Development of China’s Education” (issued in 1993) which proposed a new negotiating dynamic between the government, market, and higher education in response to economic development and rising demand for education (Law & Pan, 2009). Throughout the 2000s, Chinese higher education expanded quickly, particularly as a result of the creation of private (or minban, which means being operated by the people) institutions. Moreover, new policies during that period allowed public universities to establish and run affiliated “independent colleges” that could be profit-oriented. Across university campuses, research was becoming more focused on creating or applying knowledge for economic growth. Business, engineering science, foreign languages, and international commerce were some academic courses that higher education institutions started to offer. Given their relevance and instrumental value, those majors were popular among students. In the meantime, academic programmes which were self-funded became more prevalent. As for the professional life of Chinese academics, they were allowed to accept contracted projects or entrepreneurial assignments from companies or organisations outside campus. That has become a common practice among academics for improving academic salaries. In summary, the Chinese state steers the “managed” marketization of higher education and academic entrepreneurialism through enacting laws, regulating information, and appropriating funding (Tang, 2014a). However, in 2021 the Chinese government implemented the new policy entitled “Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-Campus Training Burden of Students in Compulsory Education” which significantly reworked the existing negotiated dynamics between the state, education and market (Jiang & Saito, 2022). Having said that, universities are still expected to play an active role in the national innovation system for the state agenda of mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation.

While it is said that the institutional history of Tsinghua University mirrors the development of modern higher education in contemporary China (Kirby, 2014), Tsinghua is a representative example of an active player of Chinese academic entrepreneurialism. Located adjacent to the Zhongguancun Science Park, known as ‘China’s Silicon Valley’ focussing on the life sciences, the University is a pioneer of Chinese academic entrepreneurialism due to its core institutional strength in science, engineering, and management. Considered a national pioneer of the ‘Entrepreneurial University’ in China, Tsinghua is the home of China’s first departments and degree programmes of engineering, and its entrepreneurial innovation lies in its infrastructure as a polytechnics-turned university and sound financial sustainability on account of the well-endowed Tsinghua Foundation (Zhong et al., 2022). The University initiated an entrepreneurship education infrastructure called “x-Lab” in 2013. With its School of Economics and Management as the leading academic unit, x-Lab connects 14 schools and departments to foster student creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship by pursuing the yet-to-discover possibilities through interdisciplinary endeavours and collaborations between students, academics, graduates, entrepreneurs, investors and experts across the national society (Tsinghua x-lab, 2020). The Tsinghua University President’s Innovation Challenge, established in 2014, is the university-wide competition which awards innovative and socially-impactful projects by students, academics, and graduates. The initiative has created an accumulated investment of more than US$ 145 million and valuation of US$ 607 million (Tsinghua University, 2021). From an organisational perspective, Tsinghua University fosters academic entrepreneurialism through the five aspects of institutional transformations that it displays according to Clark’s conceptualisation of the entrepreneurial university: strengthened steering core, expanded developmental periphery, diversified funding base, stimulated academic heartland and integrated entrepreneurial culture. It also demonstrates organisational agility for knowledge demands for national and global sustainable development (Zhong et al., 2022). Similar results were also found in other studies investigating different Chinese universities by using the same western-led conceptualisation of academic entrepreneurialism (for example Liu, 2012; Zhu & Yang, 2023).

However, the way in which Chinese academic entrepreneurialism evolves is shaped by the cultural system in Chinese communities. There are nonlinear paths of entrepreneurial development of Chinese universities (Zhou & Peng, 2008). While entrepreneurship and entrepreneurialism embrace the individual and organisational attributes of creativity, innovation and risk taking, it is understood that risks, including its meaning, perception and impact, are taken differently in various cultural contexts. For example, Chinese culture tends to be, arguably, more risk-averse and people in the communities prefer less risky but conservative approaches to entrepreneurial initiatives. Chinese risk-taking culture is concerned with concrete impact and deliverables of entrepreneurial activities within a specific timeframe but not long-term transformation and gains. Moreover, the culture is sensitive to external influences such as government policies, politics, economic trends, and market conditions. Entrepreneurial freedom is brought about by the state agenda, collective consensus and top-down demands. A study found that notwithstanding the high level of interest in entrepreneurship shown by China’s college graduates, their entrepreneurial intention, engagement in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship survival rate are low (Lyu et al., 2021).

Conclusion: Self-Understanding of the University and Open-Ended Possibilities of Academic Entrepreneurialism?

In this paper we reviewed the key ideas from the conceptual literature of academic entrepreneurialism and proposed some new ideas and insights by contextualising the concept. We critically considered the applied universality of academic entrepreneurialism and its limitations of making sense of cultural uniqueness in various contexts including China. Given the fact that diverse academic, economic and political cultures exist, the ‘entrepreneurial university’ should not be a universal and all-encompassing template of most universities in the 21st century. Rather, academic entrepreneurialism is not the end but the beginning of constitutive, continuous and complex transformation of institutional reasoning of the university. Different types of university are ‘enterprising’ themselves and navigating their own ways of being a university (Tang & Chau, 2020) in the age of technological revolutions, creative disruptions, global crises and political tensions. Under the broader and universal conceptualisation of academic entrepreneurialism, universities will evolve into different forms which the world does not yet have the language to describe or understand. The arguments of the paper echo the claim by Ronlad Barnett (2010) that “entrepreneurialism offers generous spaces for new creative forms of academic life.” (p.43). However, we should broaden the imagination of the university beyond the existing narrow discourse of academic entrepreneurialism.

This paper also shows that the spirit of academic entrepreneurialism shares some common ground with the cultural foundation of the Chinese University which champions openness, pragmatism, and unity in diversity (Hayhoe & Li, 2012). The development of contemporary Chinese higher education features the continuing processes of trial and error in learning, selecting, and emulating different national models at certain points of time (Li, 2012). The political innovation of ‘One country Two systems’ offers universities in Hong Kong and Macau, and their initiatives in the Greater Bay Area in Southern China, some space to explore another form of university life which incorporates both Chinese and Western intellectual traditions when universities are enterprising themselves. The case of academic entrepreneurialism in China problematises the East-West framework. The kind of entrepreneurialism lived out in universities in other parts of the world would be different from the one portrayed by western-led conceptualisation. In higher education systems with a strong state, the notions of academic freedom, university autonomy, institutional innovation and individual entrepreneurialism need to comply with the state directions mandated from above. It is criticised, from an Anglo-American perspective, that as institutional and individual intellectual resources are not independently trusted, the curious and creative instincts of their academic profession cannot be fully released. Academic innovation and entrepreneurialism are limited.

However, academic innovation and entrepreneurialism - and the underlying neo-liberalism - create concerns about truth, power, the university self, and ethics (Ball, 2015). The problem of academic entrepreneurialism is obvious. While demands for knowledge will become more and of greater significance and impact, universities should be aware of the stronger need to be self-reflective about their role in the ever-accelerating world development but not merely responsive to entrepreneurial opportunities. Self-understanding of a university is as important as its interest in researching and understanding the world. Only through self-understanding a university can become itself (Barnett, 2010). Does academic entrepreneurialism strengthen the public good of the University or diminish it? Ethics, educational character, cultural good and public mission of the University are always important concerns for self-understanding of the University and its continuing reflexivity (Bourdieu, 2004). These are especially important in an era of crises, changes and entrepreneurialism.

Regarding global justice in higher education, it is argued that higher education development in the East, despite its fast and explicit expansion and achievements, would reach the ‘glass ceiling’ (Altbach, 2013) at the end. Would academic entrepreneurialism provide any new and innovative space for non-Western universities to overcome the Western supremacy and dominance in higher education? We recommend further research and theoretical discussions concerning the potential power and problems of entrepreneurialism and innovation in solving growing inequalities and social divisions within and across higher education and socio-economic systems, as well as creatively disrupting Whiteness as futurity (Shahjahan & Edwards, 2022).