School of Business and Finance Prof. D.J. Visser, Ph.D. 1 The challenges of entrepreneurship education at university: Evidence from a longitudinal survey

School of Business and Finance

Prof. D.J. Visser, Ph.D.1

The challenges of entrepreneurship education at university:

Evidence from a longitudinal survey

Chaoyang University of Technology

Professor D.J. Visser, Ph.D.Professor of Management

School of Business and FinanceUniversity of the Western Cape

BellvilleSouth Africa



Introduction

• Entrepreneurship education at university

• Lack of employment opportunities

• Introduction of course at 2nd year level

Purpose of this paper

Design of an innovative module Practical implementation Assessing efficacy by means of longitudinal survey



Literature review on entrepreneurship education

• Laukannen (2000)

• Education about entrepreneurship

• Education for entrepreneurship

• Mason (2000)

• Developing cores skills & attributes

• Literature supports:

• Entrepreneurship can be taught (Timmons & Spinelli, 2004)

• Education can enhance entrepreneurial skills, competencies, attitudes (Davies, 2001)



Hytti’s Model of Entrepreneurship Education

•Learn to understand entrepreneurship

•Learn to become more entrepreneurial

•Learn to become an entrepreneur

•What do entrepreneurs do?

•What is entrepreneurship?

•Why are entrepreneurs needed?

•How many entrepreneurs do we have?

•I need to take responsibility of my learning, career and life

•How do I take responsibility?

•Can I become an entrepreneur?

•How to become an entrepreneur?

•How to manage the business?



Measuring entrepreneurship at tertiary level• Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation scale (validated

by Robinson, Stimpson, Huefner & Hunt, 1991)

• Specifically designed to measure “attitude”

• Successfully discriminates between entrepreneurs & non-entrepreneurs

• EAO subscales:

• Achievement in Business (ACH)

• Innovation in Business (INN)

• Personal Control (PC)

• Self-esteem (SE)

• All 4 subscales validated for South Africa (Van Wyk, Boshoff and Owen, 1999)



Hypotheses• H1: Achievement orientation improves after having

attended the training module

• H2: Personal control improves after having attended the training module

• H3: Innovation improves after having attended the training module

• H4: Self-esteem improves after having attended the training module



Academic programme for entrepreneurship at second year level

• Term 1: Starting a business (Theory)

• Entrepreneurship as a career choice, theory on starting and running an enterprise

• Term 2: Starting a business (Practice)

• Group involvement, forming micro-enterprise teams

• Term 3: Operating the small business (Practice)

• Running enterprises, experiencing success factors

• Term 4: Harvesting the enterprise (Practice)

• Group dynamics, conflict resolution



Assessment methods

• Weekly journals

• Student peer evaluation

• Interview/interaction with entrepreneurs

• Group business plan

• Action training

• Group enterprise progress reports

• Case studies

• Term tests

• Final group report

• Examination



Research method: Longitudinal survey

• Design of study

• T1: Pre-test

• T2: Post-test

• Experimental group and Control group subjected to same tests



Student profiles in terms of sex

Frequency Percent

Experimental Group Male FemaleTotalMissing SystemTotal

25 36 61 8 69

36.2

52.2 88.4 11.6100.0

Control Male Female No otherTotal

15

27 3 45

33.3 60.0 6.7100.0



Paired samples – statistical comparison between T1 and T2

Mean N Std. Deviation

Std. ErrorMean

Experimental GroupPair 1 achav1 achav2Pair 2 inovav 1 inovav 2Pair 3 cntlav1 cntlav2Pair 4 slfav1 slfav2

7.91088.19906.44756.71836.98467.24627.46387.6825

6060606065656363

.66397

.81062

.67938

.735311.084481.12614.94482.81451

.08572

.10465

.09493

.08771

.13451

.13968

.11904

.10262

Control GroupPair 1 achav1 achav2Pair 2 inovav 1 inovav 2Pair 3 cntlav1 cntlav2Pair 4 slfav1 slfav2

8.22027.94626.59126.43387.25257.17947.80417.4561

3535343443433838

.845521.083751.00178.91102

1.269681.187521.026001.13893

.14292

.18319

.17180

.15624

.19362

.18109

.16644

.18476



Paired samples Test T1-T2

T df Sig.(2-tailed)

Experimental Group Pair 1 achav1 & achav2 Pair 2 inovav1 & inovav2 Pair 3 cntlav1 & cntlav2 Pair 4 slfav1 & slfav2

-2.7602.833-1.7181.425

59596462

.008**

.006**.091.159

Control Group Pair 1 achav1 & achav2 Pair 2 inovav1 & inovav2 Pair 3 cntlav1 & cntlav2 Pair 4 slfav1 & slfav2

1.550-.696.387

-2.080

34334237

.130

.339

.701.044*

* p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01

Comparison between training group and control group after training

Source Df Mean Square F Sig.

Achievement Control InnovationSelf-esteem

1111

3.4931.4491.9893.805

8.5741.4495.9135.735

.004

.170

.017

.019



Confirming the hypotheses (1)• H1: Achievement orientation improves after having

attended the training module.

• The training had a significant positive effect on Achievement. The trained students showed a significantly higher score in the post training measure than the control group

• H2: Personal control improves after having attended the training module.

• Hypothesis 2 could not be confirmed. Students with a high score of external control believe that the situation is mainly determined by external forces.



• H3: Innovation improves after having attended the training module

• The results show that students increased their innovation score significantly between T1 and T2 as well as in comparison to a control group

• H4: Self-esteem improves after having attended the training module.

• At the end of the academic year the self-esteem of the training group was significantly higher than that of the control group.

Confirming the hypotheses (2)



Summary of the elements of assessment and score values (N=85)

Learning objectives Efficacy of lecturers Assessing the module

High Medium Low High Medium Low High Medium Low

74.1% 14.2% 11.7% 82.5% 10.3% 7.2% 86.0% 11.8% 2.2%

9 Questions 13 Questions 8 Questions



Conclusions

• Changing the mindsets of students by offering self-employment (i.e. entrepreneurship) as a viable alternative to becoming a job-seeker;

• Presenting students with the necessary business skills to start and run an enterprise;

• Facilitating and further enhancing experiential learning by running and managing their own enterprises on campus;

• Subjecting students to real-life examples of the typical problems, needs and constraints entrepreneurs face; and,

• Developing role models based on the successful examples of similar student enterprises from previous years.



Recommendations

• Future training: “hands-on”

• Length of training courses

• Longer training time period impacts positively on the outcome

• Replication at other tertiary institutions

Documents

School of Business and Finance Prof. D.J. Visser, Ph.D. 1 The challenges of entrepreneurship education at university: Evidence from a longitudinal survey