What’s limiting Entrepreneurship Education?

Abstract

This paper discusses the pedagogical issues faced by professors who design and deliver entrepreneurship programs by using a framework consisting of eight truisms that describe the dominant thinking of traditional education which forms the basic structure for the vast majority of U.S. colleges and universities. The eight truisms are valid for the majority of the educational programs offered by U.S. colleges and universities but tend to retard the development of entrepreneurship education in higher education, i.e., the eight truisms simultaneously support professional education while retarding the design, development, and delivery of the optimum entrepreneurship education (EE) for future entrepreneurs. As the Kaufman Foundation (2001) claims: “. . . the quality of any entrepreneurship program must be measured in part by how it meets the needs of the students”; rather than in strict compliance with the institutional requirements of tradition-based education.