The Role of Universities in Supporting and Delivering Enterprise Education

Abstract

While the academic debate has moved beyond the question of whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught and whether or not there is a need or demand for it, there is still considerable debate as to the most appropriate methods of delivering entrepreneurship education. This paper provides an overview of teaching strategies, pedagogies and methods of delivery of entrepreneurship courses and modules at the University of Glamorgan, an institution with a critical role to play in the economic regeneration of a region that has suffered severe deprivation due to the decline of its traditional coal and steel industries. The authors consider the raison d’être of entrepreneurship education. Are students, for example, studying an entrepreneurship course to enable them to become ‘entrepreneurs' or to gain new skills and become ‘enterprising people’ in whatever careers they choose to pursue? The authors suggest that ‘enterprise education’ is a misunderstood and misused term and that, on a practical level, those who deliver entrepreneurship programmes struggle to do so in an enterprising way. They conclude that course designers need to re-examine why and for whom they are developing entrepreneurship courses.