An Evidenced-Based Approach

Investments in entrepreneurial education are failing to develop entrepreneurs

 

Our research was based on the hypothesis that, current entrepreneurship teaching methods are undermining entrepreneurial intention for students interested in becoming entrepreneurs. We explored the effectiveness of traditional teaching approaches, which tend to rely on developing business plans and models that focus on teaching students about entrepreneurship, against a Problem-Based learning approach that uses action-learning methodologies designed to teach students entrepreneurship.

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, which links one’s beliefs with their behavior, we compared the changes in attitudes and intentions of students in two introductory entrepreneurship courses. We examined results within and between groups. Data was collected at the start, middle, and end of courses.

Results support our hypothesis in that, current teaching approaches undermine students’ intention to become an entrepreneur. In contrast, exposing students to actual entrepreneurship results in statistically different outcomes. But the students must first learn the struggles and failures of entrepreneurship. Once they start figuring out product/market fit their attitudes and intentions about entrepreneurship go up. Students showed an increase in entrepreneurial activity at the end of the semester.