Does Entrepreneurship Education Deliver? A Review of Entrepreneurship Education University Programmes in the UK

Abstract

The student is a consumer of education and is motivated by their graduate outcomes. Entrepreneurship provides the opportunity for substantially greater graduate outcomes, but does it deliver? This paper reviews the undergraduate bachelor Entrepreneurship Education Programmes (EEPs) offered by universities in the UK. It explores the active and engaged approaches to learning through the module themes offered and considers the challenges of using routinely collected data to understand the impact of these programmes. By using data which is publicly available, we build a national viewpoint on the subjects that lead to greater continuation, student satisfaction and earning potential. The results of this study provide five key insights about EEPs. First, they focus mainly on entrepreneurship but lack a high proportion of entrepreneurship-specific modules. Comparative analysis with other disciplines is needed for context. Second, the number of entrepreneurship modules generally increases throughout the programme, but researchers face challenges such as ambiguous module naming. Third, EEP students show lower satisfaction than those studying for other business degrees, indicating a potential impact of unique pedagogies. Fourth, higher EEP continuation rates are not evident, although this may be mitigated by more selective entry requirements. Finally, EEP graduates have higher employability rates than their business degree counterparts but lower initial earnings, reflecting their entrepreneurial career paths. From this work, we identified a range of calls for further research and suggestions for practice.

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