Policy Implications on Direction and Improvement of University Entrepreneurship Education

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1 , pp Policy Implications on Direction and Improvement of University Entrepreneurship Education 1 Lee Sin-Jeong*, Lee Young-Min** Sookmyung women s Univ*, Sookmyung women s Univ**, sjlee@sm.ac.kr Abstract. As the slow growth trend of the world economy continues, countries around the world set sustainable growth and job creation as the main agenda, and are seeking for an alternative in entrepreneurship. The Korean government, which takes up economic revitalization and job creation through creative economy as the national agenda, stresses the importance of revitalizing youth entrepreneurship as the core of creative economy and is implementing various programs to support it. In tune with this trend, universities are actively encouraging entrepreneurship education by strengthening their entrepreneurship education competency and establishing an entrepreneurship-friend school system. However, a question has been raised about the effectiveness of universities entrepreneurship education in the recent years. In this regard, we will look into the current status of entrepreneurship education and will present a direction about where entrepreneurship education should be headed in the future. Keywords: Entrepreneurship Education 1 Introduction As the world is undergoing a prolonged slow growth, countries around the globe have established various policies for economic growth and job creation, one of which is fostering entrepreneurship. As the unemployment rate, especially youth unemployment, is increasing in Korea due to jobless economic growth, the government is stressing the importance of youth entrepreneurship as a solution alternative to youth unemployment and also as a means of securing a creative growth engine that will contribute to creating new jobs(korea International Trade Association, Institute for International Trade, 2014). The reason why youth entrepreneurship is receiving much attention is that unlike the livelihood-oriented start-up businesses after retirement, youth entrepreneurship usually takes place in the technology- and knowledge-intensive sectors or in new growth engine sectors, and therefore plays a critical role in improving the industrial competitiveness of the entire nation(korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, 2011). The government is making various efforts by establishing polices and investing national budgets to promote the entrepreneurship of university students. To keep pace ISSN: ASTL Copyright 2015 SERSC

2 with this trend, many universities are trying to establish a entrepreneurship-friendly school system. Thus, the government puts its policy focus on the revitalization of entrepreneurship education policy enabled and universities are actively scrambling to offer entrepreneurship education, a question has recently been raised regarding the effectiveness of universities entrepreneurship education programs. To address this issue, this study will look into the current status and problems of universities entrepreneurship education programs, and suggest improvement measures. 2 Importance and Current Status of Entrepreneurship Programs Entrepreneurship education is important for job creation and economic revitalization through start-up businesses by raising the motivation of youth entrepreneurship. A survey shows that those students who experienced entrepreneurship education tend to be more active in building a future plan for venture startups, and is helpful in strengthening their will to pursue entrepreneurship (National Research Council for Economic, Humanities, and Social Sciences, 2013). For this reason, the major industrialized countries including the United States have taken up entrepreneurship education as a national agenda and have been actively fostering entrepreneurial talents. Table 1. Entrepreneurship education programs of leading countries Entrepreneurship education programs America - Small Business Administration of U,S federal government providing diverse support for Entrepreneurship education. - Enactment of the law relating to Entrepreneurship education is supported by 18 states. EU Israel - The majority of EU state provides Entrepreneurship education programs to middle and high schools. - Universities(e.g: Israel Institute of Technology, Hebrews University of Jerusalem) are designated as an incubation of Entrepreneurship and support commercializing research outcome as well as student entrepreneur. Japan - Provides Entrepreneurship education programs from elementary school to the universities. * source: The Education Ministry Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning Small Business Administration, Five-Year Plans for University Entrepreneurship Education(2013~2017) 132 Copyright 2015 SERSC

3 To develop a university as the base for entrepreneurship to revitalize the creation of startups based on human and physical infrastructure of the university, the Korean government has established various policies including a measure to nurture creative human talents who will lead the creative economy and a five-year plan for universities entrepreneurship education, and is operating the entrepreneurship leading university, the youth entrepreneurship academy school, the entrepreneurship incubation center, etc. to support the entrepreneurship education and business start-up of university students. In tune with this, universities are establishing the entrepreneurship-friendly school system by opening entrepreneurship-related departments and introducing a leave-ofabsence policy for business startups, and are making efforts to create the environment to encourage university students to venture into business startups of their own by providing support to entrepreneurship clubs and holding entrepreneurship camps and entrepreneurship competitions. 3 Problems and Improvement Measures of University Entrepreneurship Education As mentioned above, as the revitalization of youth entrepreneurship is presented as an important policy agenda and there is a strong voice to argue that university must serve as an outpost for entrepreneurship, an increasing number of universities are offering their own entrepreneurship education programs. However, although the entrepreneurship education increased in a quantitative manner, there remain many problems to be resolved in a qualitative aspect Absence of Entrepreneurship Education Specialists Recently, as many universities are opening entrepreneurship-related departments, the number of entrepreneurship lectures is increasing. The problem is that entrepreneurship lectures are delivered at the same level as liberal arts and the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is low. The fundamental cause of this problem is the absence of entrepreneurship education specialists. In Korea, as there are not enough institutes to produce entrepreneurship education specialists and therefore, there are not enough competent entrepreneurship education specialists, the reality is that there is a serious lack of systemic and specialized entrepreneurship education programs.(small and Medium Business Administration, 2003) Because of this, university professors are usually in charge of entrepreneurship lectures. As a result, there is a lack of education on practical knowledge and expert knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to foster and hire entrepreneurship education specialists who are equipped with not only entrepreneurship theory and working ability. The solution is to hire the owners of venture startups and hands-on workers as industry-academy cooperation professors.(ministry of Education, 2011). If the lecture Copyright 2015 SERSC 133

4 content is intensified and deepened through this, it is expected to improve the entrepreneurship education capacity Overemphasis on Short-term and Visible Outcomes It was only a few years ago when the entrepreneurship education started in earnest. It is difficult to expect short-term results from education. Nonetheless, the current entrepreneurship education is overly obsessed only with short-term results such as the number of university student entrepreneurs and sales volumes. For an example, the Ministry of Education set up the annual sales of over 12 million won among important employment indicators, which are the major evaluation item of Evaluation for University Restructuring, as a criterion for recognition of a one-man entrepreneur.(data released by Ministry of Education 2015) Considering that youth entrepreneurs are often faced with difficulty in terms of business operation due to their lack of social experiences and business careers and that universities must focus on items which they can achieve excellent outcomes to avoid possible disadvantages such as reduction of enrollment quotas due to evaluation results, such guidelines of the government are not well matched to the fundamental purpose of entrepreneurship education to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship across the society and to discover and foster great entrepreneurs. In the United States, after Babson College opened the Department of entrepreneurship in 1989, more than 400 schools including MIT and Stanford offered entrepreneurship education programs as part of their regular curriculum. In the UK, 20 universities including Oxford installed the Science & Enterprise Center in 1996, which offered the two-week mini-mba program (Small and Medium Business Administration, 2010) As such, major advanced countries have long been offering entrepreneurship education programs, which have become systemized. As a results, they produces the successful cases. Therefore, it is necessary to change the policy direction of entrepreneurship education from a long-term perspective and to invest time and efforts to help it to establish itself as part of university culture from a longterm viewpoint. 4 Conclusion Universities entrepreneurship education programs have many problems to solve, such as the absence of entrepreneurship education specialists and overemphasis on short-term and visible outcomes, as well as lack of entrepreneurship infrastructure. These problems must be addressed from a long-term perspective, Through this, the entrepreneurship education capacity of universities can be improved and the right entrepreneurship infrastructure can be built, which will in turn contribute to strengthening the entrepreneurship capacity of university students and producing significant outcomes of the entrepreneurship promotion policy. 134 Copyright 2015 SERSC

5 References 1. Small Business Administration: The Support Measures for Youth Technology Knowledge -based Start-up (2010) 2. Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade: Revitalizing the Youth Start-up (2011) 3. National Research Council for Economic, Humanities, and Social Sciences: A Study on ways to innovate the Korean converged vocational education for promoting the entrepreneurial youth start-ups (2013) 4. The Education Ministry Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning Small Business Administration: Five-Year Plans for University Entrepreneurship Education (2013~2017) 5. Sinjeoung Lee, Goeun Choi, Youngmin Lee: Entrepreneurship Education for Collegiate Students of Korea in Creative Economy Era (2015) Copyright 2015 SERSC 135