Investigating the Perception of University Entrepreneurship Education

Dongling Zhang

Abstract

This study focused on a university-wide entrepreneurship education program. The program sought to expand the outcomes of entrepreneurship education to social and political contexts where the goals are not necessarily economic. Data revealed that university faculty and student community held many varied, often competing views of the program. For instance, business major students’ views were limited to the business sphere whereas non-business students and instructors asserted that entrepreneurship could be applied to both business and non-business endeavors. As presented in discussing the findings of this research, this difference suggests that the implementation of the program adopted a broader perspective of entrepreneurship but implicitly involved a consideration of economic ends (e.g., acquiring funds). Such instrumental orientation was also found to cause the possibility that popular notions of entrepreneurship and indeed the views of faculty and students may hinder the implementation of the program. Further, the university’s policy implementation was found to influence the research participants unequally, thus fueling competing views of the program.