A Comprehensive Study Of Entrepreneurship Education In American Universities

The approaching globalization and knowledge-based economy are transforming the people's attitudes towards knowledge and expectation of the universities from the society and accelerated the progress and integration of science and technology. In addition, they are promoting the commercialization of scientific research achievements and the industrialization of technological innovations. As a result, the imbalance between enrollment and employment is aggravating, and the shrinking funds for education from the government leave a widening gap to cover the expenditures. In this case, entrepreneurship education comes to the fore, which advocates self-employment, technological innovation and the industrialization of innovated technologies. Entrepreneurship education focuses on fostering the entrepreneurial spirit and cultivating the abilities to operate businesses worldwide. For students, entrepreneurship education places emphasis on the self-employment and entrepreneurial mindsets; for universities, entrepreneurship education advocates the cooperation among industries, universities and research institutes; for the society, entrepreneurship education contributes to the regional economic development with advanced technologies. Entrepreneurship education started over six decades ago in American universities, and have witnessed great achievements ever since. For this reason, it is quite necessary for us to make a comprehensive study of the entrepreneurial practice in the United States, and the results from the study will surely serve our aims significantly in the development of China's higher education.The central purpose of this dissertation is to explore the approaches of entrepreneurship education in American universities, to unfold both the positively enabling factors and the negatively hindering barriers, to reveal the features current in practice and the tendency possible in future, to sum up and present a line of strategies to shed light on the development of our higher education in China. With such mission dominating the way, this dissertation resorts to various theories like Balance Theory, Social Exchange Theory, Human Capital Theory, Academic Capitalism and so forth, and examines the entrepreneurship education in American universities in terms of its background, growth, development, missions, approaches and impacts. More importantly, this dissertation generalizes and categories the practice of entrepreneurship education in American universities into two basic models for the China's counterparts to pursue selectively:Engineering College Model Entrepreneurship Education and Business College Model Entrepreneurship Education, with the former focusing on the commercialization of technological innovations and the latter on the creation of firms. Finally, an interdependent and interactive model is constructed to reveal the relationship between entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, firm creation, university entrepreneurship and economic development.The first part is the introduction. This part introduces the background of the study as well as the values of the work. After a comprehensive analysis of the literatures concerning the theme, the research clues and frames are presented.The body of this dissertation consists of seven chapters. The first chapter studies the connotations of entrepreneurship education through the comparison of some widespread educational trends. Reviewing the entrepreneurship education from the perspectives of American society, economy and culture, the dissertation claims that entrepreneurship education helps to create wealth, promote the development of the universities, and respond to the changing demands from the society. Therefore, entrepreneurship education has every reason to be highly evaluated for the benefits of the individuals, universities and the society. For the flourishing of entrepreneurship education in American universities, the author argues that the United States boasted the most favorable fertile land both socially, economically and culturally, such as the American Westward Movement, the Progressive Movement, The Roosevelt's New Deal, Americanism, pragmatism and individualism, just to name a few. As a consequence, entrepreneurship education in the United States started, developed, matured and led to the entrepreneurial transformation of some research universities.The second chapter studies the objectives and contents of entrepreneurship education. The author holds that the objectives of entrepreneurship education fall into two levels:the lower level oriented to training entrepreneurs while the upper level focusing on cultivating the entrepreneurial qualities, like entrepreneurial awareness, knowledge, ability and psychological traits.The third chapter studies the approaches of entrepreneurship education in terms of courses, programs and extracurricular activities. On the basis of the theories of Constructivism, Pragmatism, Contingency, Experiential Learning, the dissertation elaborates the four popular teaching models in entrepreneurship education which are Problem-based, Action-based, Contingency-based and Experience-based. At the end of this chapter, brief analysis is made about the balance and expansion between the three factors regarding entrepreneurship education, namely the contents, implementation strategies and the settings.The fourth chapter studies the policies underlying the entrepreneurial practices of the teachers and students in American universities. In this part, the authors analyzes the objectives, strategies and contents of entrepreneurship policies of the federal government, state government, and the local government, then features of the policies are dwelt on. Finally, the possible trend of the policies is discussed.With the University of Illinois (UI) as a case, the fifth chapter explores the policies and finances backing up the entrepreneurship education, and the measures to guarantee the excellence. In addition, this part comments on the impacts of the entrepreneurship education in UI on the regional economy, and points out that the entrepreneurship in UI is characterized by the wise integration of business-oriented entrepreneurship education, technological innovation-based entrepreneurship education, trans-disciplinary entrepreneurship education and academic research-led entrepreneurship education.The sixth chapter unfolds itself from three perspectives to explore the impacts of entrepreneurship education in the United States—the students, the universities and the society. For the students, entrepreneurship education draws over abundant fund to finance their education and fosters a lot of potential entrepreneurs. For universities, entrepreneurship education motivates the entrepreneurial transformation of the universities, promotes the new Triple Helix between university, industry and government. For the society, entrepreneurship education spurs the creation of new firms, increases employment, promotes economic development and technological innovation, and helps to build up an entrepreneurship-friendly environment.The seventh chapter expounds the inspirations and suggestions for both the implementation of entrepreneurship education and the entrepreneurial transformation of China's universities and colleges. The author holds that we should firstly be fully aware of the importance of entrepreneurship in time of globalization and knowledge-based economy. What is more, we should establish China-specific curriculum to promote entrepreneurship education and multi-faceted enhancing systems, and the greatest efforts are supposed to be devoted to cultivating the students' entrepreneurial abilities with technological innovation leading the way. With regards to entrepreneurial transformation, the author argues that research university in China should pursue academic excellence to brace up entrepreneurship and enhance its competitiveness, establish a growing body of top-grade scientists and technicians, lay equal stress on applied research and basic research, integrate itself into the overwhelmingly inevitable tide of marketization, procure financial gains on the basis of academic excellence and serve the society as the most efficient engine propelling the development of economy.The conclusion employs entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial culture as the dominating soul and theme of this dissertation. The author reemphasizes the necessity, interdependence and interaction of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial universities in the development of society, economy and culture. Entrepreneurship education is not simply for starting firms, but for cultivating entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial spirit. Similarly, entrepreneurial university never seeks financial profit as its primary focus. Instead, entrepreneurial university aspires after greatness by fostering entrepreneurship-friendly settings and promoting the development of the world through commercializing the scientific gains or technological innovations from academic excellence.