Study On The Entrepreneurship Education Practice In Public Universities In South Africa

Entrepreneurship education as a new educational concept, spread from developed countries to developing countries, it is becoming important content and trend of development of higher education in the world. It is important for all countries, especially poor Africa to innovation oriented talents cultivation, unemployment problem solving and social economy development. This paper takes entrepreneurship education of public universities in South Africa as research object, it combing the rise of entrepreneurship education at public universities, exploring development of entrepreneurship education, summarizing characteristics and problems of entrepreneurship education in South Africa and enlightenment of entrepreneurship education in South Africa to Entrepreneurship Education in China.The first part introduces the rise of entrepreneurship education at public universities in South Africa. South Africa’s economic imbalance and serious unemployment of young people led to rise of small and medium-sized enterprises and development of entrepreneurship. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor indicates low efficiency of entrepreneurship in South Africa, which has been stressed by government, private sector and education sector. Government introduce a series of policy documents which emphases importance of entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial skills training. Private sectors initiate entrepreneurship competitions, business projects, business associations and other activities. Ministry of Education issues documents which includes entrepreneurship education into higher education planning, determinng entrepreneurial second level discipline status and guiding the teaching of entrepreneurship. In active support of all sectors of society, entrepreneurship education at public universities have begun to rise and development.The second part explores current situation of entrepreneurship education at public universities in South Africa.The training objectives of entrepreneurship education at public universities are mainly summarized as two aspects:training entrepreneur and improving quality of entrepreneurship. Public universities create academic department of entrepreneurship research and management,applied center for innovation and entrepreneurship, innovation and entrepreneurship incubator and innovation of technology transfer office in charge of different education work. Public universities opene formal diploma courses and short term courses. They mainly adopte classroom teaching to implement entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial activities also carried out by some universities.Public universities establish teaching staff of theoretical knowledge and practical experience through recruitment and training. Entrepreneurship education at public university does not significantly improve entrepreneurial qualities of students and entrepreneurial rate of graduates.The overall effect of implementation is not ideal.The third part takes University of Johannesburg as an example, analyzing status of implementation of entrepreneurship education in the university.The university carries out entrepreneurship education under condition of strong economic strength and severe unemployment of urban citizens in Johannesburg City.The university not only includes entrepreneurship education into strategic development planning, also developes mission of training entrepreneurs. It establishes special business center to organize entrepreneurship courses teaching, short-term training programs and business plan competition. It creates a number of specialized teachers who engage in entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurship education of the university help many students to start business and improves employment situation of graduates.The fourth part summarizes main characteristics, problems and causes of entrepreneurship education at public universities in South Africa. The main characteristics of entrepreneurship education are:vigorously supporting development of entrepreneurship education in all sectors of the community, universities attaching great importance to development of entrepreneurship education,creating diversified business organization, diversified entrepreneurship curriculum system integration, establishing entrepreneurial faculty by multi-channel.The problems still exist:low degree of popularization of entrepreneurship education, unreasonable curriculum, traditional methods of teaching and assessment, lack of excellent teachers, result of implementation being not significant.The causes of problems include:influence of traditional social and educational ideas, deficiency of awareness of entrepreneurship education at public universities, imperfect of social entrepreneurship support system.The practice of entrepreneurship education in South Africa’s public universities shows that, although public universities carrying out entrepreneurship education in different degrees, the overall implementation effect is not ideal, and entrepreneurship education at public universities is in the primary stage of development. Public universities need to further strengthen supervision and evaluation of government, improve the entrepreneurship education system of university, and promote interaction with business community. Entrepreneurship education at public universities has certain impetus function to other African countries under economic backwardness, serious unemployment and business low efficiency. At the same time, it can also provide reference and thinking for development of entrepreneurship education at the same stage in Colleges and universities in China.