Entrepreneurship education at university: the plus-zone challenge

The paper discusses the contrast between what is being done and what ought to be done about entrepreneurship education at university level. Research from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor program demonstrates that entrepreneurship education is an issue of worldwide economic and social significance. It has major policy implications for every nation. The paper briefly discusses the network of entrepreneurship education and experiential learning of which the university is only one component – and not necessarily the most important. The strategic and organizational context of the movement towards more entrepreneurial universities is distinguished from the purely content issue of curriculum designed for aspiring entrepreneurial practitioners. An overview of actual curricula, worldwide, is contrasted with the normative entrepreneurship education framework posited by McMullan and Long (1987). Following consideration of the problems involved in measuring the success of entrepreneurship education programs, a broad, generic template for integrated program development is presented and compared with the approach usually employed in most MBA programs at university business schools. The hierarchical, functionalist approach, symbolized by a pyramid, is contrasted with a more fluid, organic and boundary-crossing approach, symbolized by a wheel. Its central hub is a ‘plus zone’ where lies the deepest challenge for development of entrepreneurship education in a university context.