Perspectives on emerging futures for entrepreneurial education at universities
This article is part of the Future of Universities Thoughtbook | Entrepreneurship Edition, the latest volume in UIIN’s FUT_ series that gathers international experts to explore how universities can evolve into entrepreneurial, innovation-driven institutions. The edition highlights 35 contributions that examine how higher education can cultivate innovation, entrepreneurship, and societal impact in the coming decades.
In his contribution, Dr. Birgit Hofreiter, Founding Head of the Innovation Incubation Center (i²c) and TUW i2ncubator at TU Wien, shares her perspective on the evolving role of entrepreneurial education in universities. With extensive experience at the intersection of research, innovation and industry, Birgit brings a deep understanding of how higher education can adapt to nurture the next generation of change-makers.
Introduction
Looking at the recent history of universities reveals an impressive success story. Worldwide, the substantial growth in higher education institutions and student numbers represents a massive achievement for civilisation. Increased international student exchanges further contribute to global understanding and peace. In recent decades, many universities have also expanded their programs to include entrepreneurial education, leading to a considerable number of successful start-up companies.
Despite this apparent success, complacency would be misguided. A closer examination reveals identifiable problems within both general teaching and entrepreneurial education. Serious challenges lie ahead, though they are fortunately accompanied by great opportunities. In this position statement, I will offer a personal account of these problems, particularly concerning entrepreneurial education at universities, while also considering university teaching as a whole and its relation to entrepreneurial programs.
1. Focus on entrepreneurial education
The idea of complementary programs to develop students’ entrepreneurial interest and venture creation ability is relatively new. These programs are usually offered on an interdisciplinary basis outside regular study curricula. This has the positive effect of familiarising participants with the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary collaboration, while also pooling resources to promote access to relevant networks. However, the scheduling of these programs outside regular teaching has significant downsides.
For example, positions for such teachers are often unavailable due to non-traditional job descriptions, requiring alternative financing and posing challenges for teaching continuity. Simultaneously, university employees responsible for program organisation are more loosely associated with the university than traditional academic staff, leading to considerable fluctuation due to intensive poaching attempts.
A cultural divide also sometimes exists between regular subjects and these supplementary programs. This may stem from subtle academic reservations about the commercialisation of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, professors are often displeased when particularly talented students are encouraged to found companies, potentially discouraging them from academic careers.
The significant attention entrepreneurial education receives from politics and society is certainly helpful, promoting resource provision and symbolic recognition. However, this attention also leads to inappropriate expectations, often expressed through performance indicators like the number of start-ups or average turnover after five years. Such metrics can distort the actual performance, overlooking that the sole focus should not be on new ventures. Instead, these programs should encourage students to initiate broader changes in their professional lives that contribute to successful economic and social development. While the idea of promoting “intrapreneurial” skills addresses this demand, it remains far from popular.
2. Teaching at universities: Symptoms of crisis and need for change
Suppose we want to develop an orientation for how universities can better prepare students for start-ups in the future without neglecting their central tasks; in that case, it is essential to first analyse some fundamental problems of teaching and learning.
Specialisation hinders the development of an interdisciplinary perspective
The focus of traditional degree programs is primarily on imparting specialist knowledge and learning the corresponding methods. This specialisation is becoming increasingly important due to the fact that scientific disciplines are becoming increasingly differentiated. While this development is an obvious consequence of an increasingly complex world, it is not without its downsides. Students are confronted with high demands that relate to very specific issues. This hardly promotes their ability to work together across disciplines. It also leaves many unable to devote themselves to fundamental questions.
Tight structures as an obstacle
At many universities, the large number of students has led to an increasing structuring of study programs (“Verschulung” in German). At the same time, the number of examinations has increased, putting students under pressure to reproduce content they have learned in the short term. As a result, there is often no critical examination of the content. Instead of focusing on personal progress, many students limit themselves to passing the exams. This is not without consequences for the success of study programs. In a comprehensive study, Arum and Roksa concluded that a large proportion of undergraduate students in the US have made no significant progress in terms of essential skills, not least the ability to analyse critically, after completing their studies. Even if this result is not necessarily representative, there are also signs in other countries that students are insufficiently qualified.
Lack of identification with the idea of the university
Even students who are dissatisfied with individual aspects of their studies often do not think about campaigning for improvements. Instead, the established, often bureaucratic structures of the university encourage the fatalistic impression that nothing can be changed anyway. This attitude is fuelled by the fact that the university is not perceived as a community of teachers and lecturers in the traditional sense, but as a largely anonymous institution. This represents a serious obstacle to developing the courage to take the risks associated with starting up a business or pursuing innovative paths in general.
Threats to the traditional university model
The traditional model of teaching is coming under increasing pressure. Digital platforms sometimes offer high-quality content and benefit from economies of scale that universities can only dream of. At the same time, they offer a growing number of micro-credentials that threaten the value of traditional degrees and thus the role of the university. Furthermore, there are many indications that the use of AI will lead to a comprehensive transformation of teaching that universities cannot ignore if they want to survive.
3. Back to the future as a guiding principle?
Renovation is needed for both university entrepreneurial programs and general teaching, offering a synergistic opportunity. Entrepreneurial education aims to enable graduates to move beyond traditional approaches, discovering new possibilities by abstracting from familiar patterns. This aligns with the university’s original purpose: empowering students not just to learn established knowledge, but to critically question it and contribute to its development, fostering abstract thinking.
Entrepreneurial action focuses on the ability to think and implement change, benefiting the university itself. To remain successful, universities must evolve to cultivate traditional values under new conditions, rather than merely reflecting on them. As famously attributed to Gustav Mahler, “Tradition does not mean the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”.
This necessitates a new university orientation—less a business model, more a model focused on empowering students for social and economic progress. This requires rethinking the university’s external form, architecture, virtual representation, degrees, and entry requirements. Above all, a fundamental shift towards a new teaching and learning culture is paramount.
Advancing entrepreneurial education through cultural and curricular transformation
As Postman and Weingartner provocatively argued in “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, universities should support students in overcoming “arbitrary abstractions”. This recommends integrating entrepreneurial education as a cross-cutting theme within core teaching, promoting transdisciplinary skills. Furthermore, the often-flamboyant jargon of entrepreneurial programs needs maturing; tighter integration with university teaching demands a more sophisticated vocabulary. Crucially, such programs should broaden their focus beyond mere business success to encompass meaningful change within institutions, companies, and society.
Such profound change requires adapted curricula, ongoing debates, skill development, and an evolved university culture, viewed within a broader institutional context. However, reforming both the university and entrepreneurial education offers clear mutual benefits: entrepreneurial education aids in developing and testing new university models. Concurrently, a university reflecting on its traditional values will produce competent, free, creative, and “subversive” graduates essential for successful ventures. This development strengthens entrepreneurial education’s credibility, ensuring the university practices the change it advocates.
Creating a university that embodies the change it teaches
Change like this cannot happen overnight. Curricula need to be adapted, debates need to be held, skills need to be developed, and an appropriate university culture needs to evolve. And of course, this must be seen in a broader context. It would be naive to limit visions for the future of the university to this focus.
Changing both the university and entrepreneurial education could produce a clear case of mutual benefit: entrepreneurial education would contribute to developing and testing new models of university. At the same time, a university that reflects on its traditional values produces not only competent, but also creative, and “subversive” graduates, whose skills are needed not least for the successful founding of companies. Last but not least, such a development would clearly strengthen entrepreneurial education at universities. After all, it is not very credible if the university teaches people to dare to change while its structures resist change.
Ready for more?
Explore how universities can go beyond fostering entrepreneurship to become true innovation power plants. In his contribution to the Future of Universities Thoughtbook | Entrepreneurial Edition, Søren Land, Head of Division at SDU RIO, outlines how universities can transform their structures, cultures and partnerships to drive innovation and economic growth on a global scale.
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Birgit Hofreiter (author) is the Founding Head of the Innovation Incubation Center (i²c) and TUW i2ncubator at TU Wien.
