FirstPreviousNextLast

View all pages

The Teaching and Practice of Entrepreneurship within Canadian Higher Education Institutions

8. Dimension 5: Development

The development dimension focuses on whether institutions continuously improve the quality of their entrepreneurship activities by evaluating whether the institution takes into account the needs and wishes of present and past users (students and alumni) and indirect "end-users" (potential employers, venture capitalists, etc.) when developing/improving their entrepreneurship education program.

8.1 Findings

Figure 7 illustrates how the three Canadian subsets compare within the three sub-dimensions of the development dimension:

• Evaluation: Formalized evaluation procedures to follow up on attaining entrepreneurship goals and strategies.
• User-driven improvement: Evaluation of entrepreneurship courses to measure the outcome of courses from the perspective of students and end-users (employees, investors, etc.).
• Human resource development and management: Recognition of staff achievements in entrepreneurship education, requirement of staff to have entrepreneurial experience, inviting guest lecturers.

Figure 7: Spider Diagram of Development Dimension (score out of 100)

[Description of Figure 7]

The evaluation sub-dimension score indicates that Canadian institutions do not tend to use formalized evaluation procedures to track the progress of implementing entrepreneurship education goals and strategies. However, the high score in the user-driven improvement sub-dimension indicates that Canadian institutions evaluate curricular courses to a greater extent to measure the attitudes amongst students and end-users, such as investors and employers.

The average score for Canada and the top five institutions was low in the human resource development and management sub-dimension, suggesting room for improvement in terms of acknowledging staff achievements related to supporting entrepreneurship on campus and ensuring that staff teaching entrepreneurship have the necessary skills and competencies.

Evaluation procedures to track and identify development of entrepreneurship education on campus are not present in most institutions

• Only 23 percent of institutions had formalized evaluation procedures to follow up on the progress of achieving entrepreneurship goals and implementing entrepreneurship strategies.
• 20 percent of institutions evaluated entrepreneurship courses by measuring how end-users (employers and investors) evaluated the entrepreneurial skills and attitudes of students from their institution.
• Almost half of the institutions (48 percent) did not have any procedures in place for evaluating the anticipated medium- and long-term effects of entrepreneurship courses.

Although more than 80 percent of institutions (Table 8) estimated that graduates had shown some interest/demand in entrepreneurship by participating in business plan competitions, incubators or internships in start-ups, few institutions followed up on the long-term effects of such activities.

• 48 percent of institutions did not have evaluation procedures in place to identify the medium- and long-term effects upon student mindsets and skills.
• 62 percent of institutions indicated they kept in touch with alumni.
• 34 percent of institutions did not track alumni.
• 18 percent of institutions tracked the number and growth of ventures started by graduates.

FirstPreviousNextLast

View all pages