Communicating the societal value of the entrepreneurial university: Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

This study examines two concurrent trends in higher education. First, universities are increasingly focused on enabling entrepreneurship to fulfil their "third mission" of contributing to the regional economy. Second, they are intensifying efforts to communicate the entrepreneurial university portfolio as evidence of their societal value. Although previous research has explored these areas, how universities convey their entrepreneurial efforts remains unclear. Are entrepreneurial universities primarily portrayed as institutions that train future entrepreneurs, spin out companies and intellectual property, or drive cultural change towards entrepreneurship? To address this, we use natural language processing techniques to provide novel insights into how universities communicate entrepreneurship-focused activities and capability-building efforts. Our empirical focus is South Korea's top ten universities, for which we analyzed 7889 national newspaper articles in terms of a sociological capital framework. Our findings indicate that human capital-related activities receive greater emphasis than cultural and social capital capability-building efforts. This finding suggests that the third mission may not be clearly conveyed in coverage of the entrepreneurial university. The managerial implications are that university leadership can enhance communications to better showcase their societal connections and contributions in line with their third mission. • Universities must increasingly show their societal contributions. • Too little is known on how they communicate the entrepreneurial university's societal value. • We employ a sociological capital approach to understand the portrayal. • Natural language processing techniques were used to analyze 7889 articles on South Korea's top universities. • We find universities emphasize entrepreneurship-themed education and research, not necessarily the third mission.

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