Broadening the Scope of Entrepreneurship Education in Higher Education

Entrepreneurship studies are not solely for business course students (Hall, 2021). At the collegiate level, many students who choose a business major are aiming for careers in management within organizations or roles in business analysis, focusing on creating reports and presentations for internal or external stakeholders, particularly business leaders. However, students with a passion and talent in another subject may be drawn to the idea of being their own boss. Clear evidence of efforts to harness this economic potential can be found by searching terms like “University Entrepreneurship Coordinator” or “University Entrepreneurship Hub” online. This paper aims to guide the next steps in defining the scope and design of enterprise/entrepreneurship modules offered in university courses, especially in vocational programs.

Learning About, For, and Through Enterprise

Pittaway and Edwards (2012) provide classifications in forms of enterprise and entrepreneurship: 

Entrepreneurship education is presented as an academic discipline, much like history or sociology, with teaching, learning, and assessment methods aligned accordingly, such as lectures and essays.

Learning for entrepreneurship is depicted as a coverage of tasks needed to go forward in enterprise, e.g. construction of potentially administrative aspects like business plans. 

Learning through entrepreneurship involves undertaking an enterprise-related experience, e.g. a market stall or exhibition event. It tends to be viewed that learning through entrepreneurship should also involve reflection on the part of the student.

The proposed cross-curricular enterprise study emphasizes developing practical skills and self-awareness for starting a business, rather than integrating abstract academic studies of entrepreneurship into different degree programs. Therefore, “learning for” and especially “learning through” entrepreneurship seem more appropriate than merely “learning about” it.

Entrepreneurial Threshold Concepts and Self-Efficacy

Threshold concepts, which define key ways of thinking and practicing in a field (Meyer and Land, 2003), were explored and proposed for enterprise by Hatt (2018). The first concept identified is, “I can create value,” which Hatt links directly to self-efficacy. The other concepts are” “I see opportunities” (opportunity), “I can manage risk” (risk), “I know what’s important” (focus), and “I take action” (impact).

What stands out in entrepreneurial studies is that all of these defining concepts are closely tied to entrepreneurship self-efficacy. Originally defined by Bandura (1997), self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular area. This belief is thought to enhance performance by fostering greater persistence, motivation, and readiness to face challenges. Key factors that influence self-efficacy include mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological states.

It is worth noting that in developing threshold concepts for entrepreneurship, Hatt focused her research on participants who were already established entrepreneurs. It is important to recognize that progress in self-efficacy or acquiring threshold concepts in entrepreneurship should not be assumed as inevitable or necessary for all students in experiential studies. However, as mentioned in earlier work (Woodward and Leggett, 2022), tracking student entrepreneurship self-efficacy could be an interesting measure of the module’s effectiveness.

RIDE: Risks, Impediments, Drivers and Enablers

In business studies, the SWOT acronym (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is often used for basic analysis of existing organizations. However, it may not be ideal for analyzing an enterprise start-up. For example, “Threats” may only be relevant to established businesses, and the acronym may not fully capture the factors involved in a person’s decision to start an enterprise. It also may not effectively track changes in perspective as someone progresses with a start-up idea. Therefore, we propose using the acronym RIDE: Risks, Impediments, Drivers, and Enablers.

Risks are a dynamic-response in terms of adverse outcomes which may occur depending on the enterprise process. 

Impediments are ongoing aspects that can act as obstacles or constraints to taking an enterprise forward. 

Drivers are also dynamic in terms of factors that promote, or even necessitate the enterprise decisions/actions. 

Enablers are factors that exist in the environment that provide or increase the feasibility of undertaking the enterprise process.

It is important to recognize that elements in all four RIDE categories—Risks, Impediments, Drivers, and Enablers—can be either internal or external to the potential entrepreneur. Since both personal and situational factors play a role, RIDE can be applied multiple times, including during the course, to capture changes in learning and growth in the entrepreneur’s confidence and abilities. Another advantage of the RIDE framework is that modern narratives about prominent entrepreneurs, including autobiographical accounts, are more likely to align with these categories than with other models like SWOT.

An Elective and Reflective Module

Although not every student enrolling in a degree program will be interested in learning about entrepreneurial development, it is essential for such modules to be offered as stand-alone electives across most higher education courses. This also explains why entrepreneurship education should not be integrated into all subject courses, as emphasized by Pittaway and Edwards (2012) in their fourth category of enterprise learning.

Students taking this module should understand that engaging with enterprise learning is like a vocational experiment. It’s normal for their confidence in entrepreneurship to decrease during the course, and RIDE-based reflections may show that entrepreneurship isn’t the right fit for them at this time. Because of this, we recommend that a large part of the assessment focus on a critical reflection of their experiences and learning. This reflection is a crucial aspect of learning through enterprise, which we suggest should be a central focus of the module.

Recommendations

As mentioned earlier, we support the idea of a stand-alone elective module for the final level of vocational degrees. The learning experience and assessment should involve creating a business plan, with regular pitch presentations and Q&A sessions during its development. Additionally, students should work toward executing a safe yet authentic enterprise event. A crucial part of this process should be a written reflection on these experiences, specifically focusing on the student’s enterprise self-efficacy as recorded throughout the module.

Russ Woodward has degrees in economics from the UK Universities of Cambridge and Exeter. Since 2002, he has taught on the business degrees at University Centre, Grimsby: The TEC Partnership, UK. He has written a number of papers on teaching business and higher education generally for UK, USA, and Australian periodicals.

Ian Rodwell has a bachelor’s degree in public sector management from Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and a masters in sociology and sports management from Leicester University, UK. He has taught across the business and tourism management degrees at University Centre Grimsby, The TEC Partnership, UK for over 20 years.

Reece Leggett has a bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Business Management and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education from the University of Hull, UK. He also holds an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship from Wrexham University, UK.   He has previously worked as Programme Leader and then Curriculum Manager for Business at TEC Partnership’s Grimsby Institute Campus and more recently Business Development Officer at the University of Lincoln, UK, where he is now Student Enterprise Manager & Module Leader on the BA Business & Entrepreneurship degree. 

References

Bandura, Albert. “Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.” (1997). New York: W. H. Freeman. 

Hall, Rebecca. “Enterprise Education: Not just for business students!” Teaching Business & Economics 25, no. 2 (2021): 25-26.

Hatt, Lucy. “Threshold concepts in entrepreneurship–the entrepreneurs’ perspective.” Education+ Training 60, no. 2 (2018): 155-167.

Meyer, Jan-Erik., and Ray Land. “Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines.” (2003) Edinburgh. University of Edinburgh.

Pittaway, Luke, and Corina Edwards. “Assessment: examining practice in entrepreneurship education.” Education+ Training 54, no. 8/9 (2012): 778-800.

Woodward, Russ, and Reece Leggett. “Developing a can-do attitude.” Teaching Business & Economics 26, no. 2 (2022): 27-29.