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The Teaching and Practice of Entrepreneurship within Canadian Higher Education Institutions

6. Dimension 3: Resources

The resource dimension determines how entrepreneurship is funded within an institution. Sustainability of entrepreneurship education is closely related to the type and source of funding as the more long term the funding, the more sustainable the development of entrepreneurship is. This translates to a balance between dedicated funding to accomplish specific entrepreneurship education goals and short-term funding to support entrepreneurship curricular and extracurricular activities. Furthermore, entrenching entrepreneurship education as a permanent element within an institution is more likely to happen if entrepreneurship activities can generate income on their own and/or attract external funding to the institution.

6.1 Findings

Figure 3 illustrates how the three Canadian subsets compare within the three sub-dimensions of the resource dimension:

• Budget allocation: Financial support for entrepreneurship education and an overall budget for entrepreneurship.
• Income generation: Money raised for entrepreneurship education.
• Type of funding: Established financial commitments towards entrepreneurship education (short-, medium- or long-term financing).

Figure 3: Spider Diagram of Resource Dimension (score out of 100)

[Description of Figure 3]

The average score of the top five institutions (100 points) and Canada (72 points) was highest in the income generation sub-dimension, suggesting that a high number of institutions are active in one or more of the following income-generating activities — receiving donations from alumni and other philanthropists or charging fees to attend seminars and/or workshops. The average scores are below 50 points for Canada in the budget allocation and type of funding sub-dimensions, possibly indicating areas for improvement in terms of allocating funds and increasing the duration of the financial commitment towards entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship education budget varies by type of institution

• Average size of entrepreneurship education budget (2007–2008):
  • Universities: $430 000
  • Degree-granting colleges: $78 000
  • Technical institutes: $44 000

The average entrepreneurship education budget in the Western region was three times the average entrepreneurship education budget in Quebec (Figure 4)

• The Western region (British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) and the Atlantic region, on average, had the largest budgets for entrepreneurship education.
• Quebec had the lowest average entrepreneurship education budget of approximately $138 000.

Figure 4: Average Entrepreneurship Education Budget, and Breakdown between Internal and External Funding, by Region

[Description of Figure 4]

Institutions were asked to determine what proportion of their total entrepreneurship education budget was derived from internal and external funding.

• Internal funding: Financial commitment within the institution towards the development of entrepreneurship education in the short and long term.
• External funding: Funding from external stakeholders (government funding, donations and alumni donations) usually comes with restrictions and clauses. Generally not a steady source of income for long-term projects.

Internal funds provided the majority of entrepreneurship education budgets, except in the Atlantic region; in Ontario, internal and external funding were roughly equal

• By institution, a split of 51 percent from internal funding and 49 percent from external funding was common for the entrepreneurship education budgets of most universities and colleges.
• By province, internal funds provided more than 60 percent of the entrepreneurship education budgets in the West (British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut), the Prairies (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and Quebec. An equal split was found in Ontario, while almost 70 percent of the entrepreneurship education budget in the Atlantic region was attributed to external funding.

Close to half of the surveyed institutions support entrepreneurship education in the short term, suggesting a limited commitment to the development of entrepreneurship education in the long run (Figure 5)

• 48 percent of institutions primarily funded entrepreneurship activities with short-term/project funding (1–2 year commitment).
• Slightly more than one third (34.4 percent) of institutions supported entrepreneurship activities with a mixture of short-term (1–2 years), medium-term (3–5 years) and long-term (5+ years) funding.

Figure 5: Average Entrepreneurship Education Budget, by Duration of Funding

[Description of Figure 5]

Approximately three quarters of institutions exhibiting a long-term financial commitment to entrepreneurship education established at least one type of institutional infrastructure

• Of the institutions that allocated medium-, long- or mixed-term funding to entrepreneurship activities (curricular or extracurricular), 72 percent hosted at least one type of entrepreneurship infrastructure (entrepreneurship department, entrepreneurship centre, TTO, incubator facilities).
• In comparison, of those institutions that allocated only short-term funding to entrepreneurship activities, 66 percent hosted at least one type of entrepreneurship infrastructure.

Approximately 72 percent of surveyed institutions raised funds for entrepreneurship education through one or more income-generating activities (Table 4)

• 48 percent of institutions generated income through donations from stakeholders.
  • Approximately 60 percent of universities raised funds in this manner.
• Other popular income-generating activities included donations from alumni and fees from hosting seminars.
• 28 percent of institutions did not participate in income-generating activities.
  • By institution, 73 percent of technical institutes did not participate in income-generating activities compared with 10 percent of colleges and 14 percent of universities.

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