Study on Entrepreneurship-oriented University Education Models

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1 Study on Entrepreneurship-oriented University Education Models WANG Yong 1, ZHANG Lei 2 1. School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R.China, The Institute of Information Spreading Engineering, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun, Jilin, P.R.China, Wangy40@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn Abstract: Based on the analysis of the basic characteristics of university students entrepreneurial activity, this paper put forth that the operating mechanism of university education should be transformed from the employment-oriented into entrepreneurship-oriented and to cultivate the entrepreneurial qualities should be the core functions as a university. And then, the entrepreneurship-oriented models of university functions (teaching, research and economic) were established by method of comparative analysis. The study has shown: we should make entrepreneurship education into university teaching design in accordance with the demands of human resources, and then to guide students to develop their own qualities of entrepreneur; one of the main objectives of university research is to create the new knowledge and new technology which can lead to new enterprises creation or mature companies start the second entrepreneurship, so it is different from the ordinary business technology research or management innovation; university economic functions must be based on market mechanisms to achieve organic integration of the physical resources, human resources and capital, and to make the market mechanism, university resources and opportunity-type entrepreneurship into a logical system. Keywords: university education, entrepreneurship, model, university student 1 Introduction According to the data statistics of the Ministry of Human resources and Social Security, the total number of university graduates in 2008 to 559 million, in 2009 to 610 million, 630 million people by 2010, while the figure will be continue to refreshed in subsequent years. IF to plus the number of unemployed university students accumulated over the years, the number of students in need of employment would more than ten million [1]. At this stage, to improve employment through entrepreneurship has become a national strategy which in relation to the people's livelihood then national security and people's plenty then national power, accordingly, university education should be transform from the employment-oriented to entrepreneurship-oriented. We should be thinking innovation, to exploration the university education modes which are suited to the basic characteristics of university students entrepreneurship. 2 The basic characteristics of university students entrepreneurship It is based on to correct understand the basic characteristics of university students entrepreneurship that university education transform into the entrepreneurship-oriented. The entrepreneurial activity will be divided into two types by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) based on the initial entrepreneurial motivation. One is opportunity-type entrepreneurship, which is that entrepreneurs are attracted to business by some opportunities. Another is survival-type entrepreneurship, which is that entrepreneurs have to make the business as their choice, because either all the other options are none or not satisfied [2]. University students entrepreneurship can be showed in the both types. For example: because of that they thought a new idea, found a market opportunity, or invented a new product and so on, some university students went to the entrepreneurial path, so the performance is opportunity-type entrepreneurship; if nowhere a graduate could find a work or the work can t meet his basic needs of material or spiritual, he may be to start an enterprise as a way to escape the pressure of social life, so the 166

2 performance is survival-type entrepreneurship. The major difference is that the entrepreneurial motivations are different. In general, university students as a new force of social employment, compared with other social groups, they have the superiority in accepting the newly emerging things respect. They are full of vigor and fervor, and few pressures come from the other family members. So the university students entrepreneurship should be the opportunity-type mainly. However, they lack of social practice and the entrepreneurship education of they were received could not meet the actual demand, especially they have depended on others people so long in economic respect that they rarely have the opportunity to undertake the economic risk. In the first step towards economic independence, most graduates look forward to employment rather than entrepreneurship, what can be drawn from the fact that the rate of university students entrepreneurship and the rate of success are all low. In this expectation, university students entrepreneurship is essentially survival-type. University students entrepreneurial activities have advantages of opportunity-type objectively, and with the performances of survival-type subjectively, so university students entrepreneurship is the unity of opportunity-type and survival-type. From another perspective, university students development can be viewed as a system operation process: go to university university education - choice of occupation - into the community. Among them, go to university is the input link, university education is part of the transformation within the system, Choice of occupation including entrepreneurship and employment is the system output links, that is, from the University to society, and the qualities of human resources depend on the level of integrate into the society. The main difficulty of graduate employment is supply and demand of human resources do not match, resulting in that graduate couldn t integration into the society as soon as possible. Therefore, on the one hand, we should reform of university education by improving the conversion of the input link and transformation link to improve supply quality; on the other hand, we should expand university students entrepreneurial activities to adjust output link for achieving entrepreneurs own employment while they can create more jobs. University students entrepreneurship is essentially a high-level form of employment, which can lead to other employment activities takes place. Survival-type entrepreneurship and opportunity-type entrepreneurship is united in the choice of occupation. University students entrepreneurship itself is both a high-quality supply of human resources and a way to create the needs of human resources. Demand and supply of human resources are unified in a high degree. 3 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university education Now, three assumptions can be drawn: the active level of university students entrepreneurship and the level of university students employment are positive correlation; the conversion degrees of university students entrepreneurship from survival-type to opportunity-type and the active level of university students entrepreneurship are positive correlation; the degree of university students as human resources supply in harmony with social demand and the active level of university students entrepreneurship are positive correlation. Therefore, in order to achieve full employment for university students, university students need to improve the active level of entrepreneurial activities, according to the social demand to regulate supply, and transforming the survival-type into the opportunity-type, which determines the operating mechanism of university education should be transformed from the employment-oriented into entrepreneurship-oriented. To take entrepreneurship-oriented of university education as its basic objective is aim to cultivate university students qualities of entrepreneur, rather than university students should all be developed into entrepreneurs, because that is the result of multiple factors. In the GEM model, the early entrepreneurial activity is the result of synthesis of entrepreneurial opportunity and entrepreneurial capacity [3], and they are influenced largely by some entrepreneurial environment conditions, such as policy, business and culture, etc. Therefore, it is not sure that university students who accepted entrepreneurship-oriented education can succeed in business, however, entrepreneurship-oriented education will no doubt do better qualities of entrepreneur for they which are include the entrepreneurial awareness, spirit and 167

3 ability. Whatever university students selected entrepreneurship or employment, the qualities of entrepreneur will contributed to enhance their social competitiveness, and to release the inherent advantages of theirs. The qualities of entrepreneur are the results of the university education system transformation, and the measure standard of university education quality. To cultivate the entrepreneurial qualities should be the core functions as a university. There are three main functions of university: teaching, research and economic development [4]. To achieve entrepreneurship-oriented of university education is to achieve the entrepreneurship-oriented of three functions. 3.1 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university teaching The main function of university teaching is to preserve and convey knowledge and skill. This function is achieved through the implementation of teaching mode. The main teaching mode can be summarized in two kinds: instill-oriented mode (students passive acceptance), and personality-oriented mode (students actively participate in). These two modes focus on the relationship between teacher and student, training the generalized labor quality that is need when students engaged in certain career. However, the university education is transferring from elite education to mass education, and society needs more human resources with the quality of entrepreneurs, what requires university teaching mode focuses on the relationships of society, teacher and student, and focus on the training of qualities of entrepreneur. This formed the third mode which can be called entrepreneurship-oriented model. Figure 1 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university teaching Shown in Figure 1, in this model, the supply and the demand of human resources are closely integrated. The key of this model is that the demand of human resources is taken as input. First, it can to guide teachers to integrate entrepreneurship education into the whole teaching design on-demand, including teaching of theory, entrepreneur interaction with students, entrepreneurship case study, business software simulation, entrepreneurship competition, entrepreneurship training and teaching evaluation, to take cultivating the qualities of entrepreneur as a basic goal of teaching. Second, it can to guide students to learn on-demand, to complete every aspect of instructional design actively, to develop their qualities of entrepreneur, and then to generate the supply of human resources coordinate with the demand of social. After graduation, they will select entrepreneurship or employment with the qualities of the entrepreneur. 3.2 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university research Another important activity of University is to create new knowledge which is embodied in university's research functions. Many enterprises have their own R&D institutions which bearing functions of technology innovation, management innovation and cultural innovation, but these innovations are generally services for specific business. University research is different from enterprise R&D, because it 168

4 can solve business specific issues, but more important it can discover or extract the fundamental or cutting-edge research topics, and such research can often lead to new entrepreneurial activities. The entrepreneurship-oriented of university research is aiming at to enhance university research activity level, to detect or extract the fundamental or cutting-edge issues as input of university research system, and take new knowledge or new technology as the output of it, which will trigger the first or the second entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship-oriented model of the university research is shown in Figure 2. Figure 2 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university research The fundamental and cutting-edge research topics which are needed by Entrepreneurial activities can only come from practices of social life. University can establish horizontal research projects by cooperation with enterprise, or extract longitudinal research projects from practical activities of enterprise. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurship-oriented mode of research is set that the source and goal of university research are to lead and serve as entrepreneurial activities, so that university research higher than ordinary business technology research or management innovation at the level, which would also help to change the pompous academic atmosphere, and university facilities to be more fully utilized. More importantly, participating in the research projects can provide more opportunities for students to understand the actual business, meanwhile, teachers can improve the teaching design of entrepreneurship education, to achieve combination of theory and practice truly, to promote opportunity-type entrepreneurship of students, finally, achieving research, education and social demand in close combination in entrepreneurship level. 3.3 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university s economic functions University s economic function serves for the economic and social development directly, and to transform the discovery and creation of innovative to new products and services, that is, combining the knowledge with capital, to create new enterprises. If supported by appropriate market operation mechanism, University will become the most potential main body of knowledge-based entrepreneurship. University teaching and research functions of the entrepreneurial orientation let us rethink what talents that University should to cultivate and what kind of knowledge that University should to create, and entrepreneurial orientation of Economics functions allows us to reposition the relation of university-industry. University is usually to fulfill its economic function through the following activities: for teachers, to engage in part time job in enterprises, to provide consultancy for enterprises, to cooperate with enterprises to solve actual business problems, or to establish enterprise; for universities, to establish enterprise, and to found Technology Park or Incubator, etc. These activities can be reduced to two types, one is personal behavior of teacher, and the other is the action of university. In these activities, teachers 169

5 establish enterprise and university establish enterprise and found entrepreneurial platform (science and technological park or incubator, etc.) are able to maximize the University economy functions, but it is easy to breed out many drawbacks that in the way of run a university to do business. How to cross the gap between university culture and enterprise culture? We believe that the integration of resources base on market mechanism is an effective way. The entrepreneurship-oriented model of the university economic functions is shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 The entrepreneurship-oriented model of university s economic functions First of all, we can integrate the physical resources (sites, equipments, and natural resources, etc.) and intangible resources (University's brand, databases, etc.). Many universities have the advantage of materialized resources and the center position of some field in a certain region. Second, the teacher resources, student resources, and human resources of society can be integrated, it is the unique advantage of University that owning many high-quality and low-cost professional talents. Third, we can integrate social capital and investments of teachers and universities. Because owning the advantages of high credit, university can greatly reduce the cost of capital transactions, thus to form the strong capital strength easily. Finally, integrating all aspects of the above, we can develop entrepreneurial activities, including teacher establish enterprise, university establish enterprise and found entrepreneurial platform, etc. The key of Integration is to base on market mechanisms rather than administrative orders, or willingness of leader. In this process, participating teachers and students will get a thorough training about entrepreneurship from the awareness, spirit to ability, meanwhile, the market mechanism, advantages of university resources and opportunity-type entrepreneurship will form a logical system. We can through market-based mechanisms to integrate physical resources, human resources with capital organic, and then to release the inherent advantages of the university. University can be a provider of human resources and knowledge which are needed by industry, and can also become a vital force in promoting industrial development. 4 Conclusion Entrepreneurship is a fundamental way to solve the university students employment problem. The basic 170

6 characteristics of university students entrepreneurship decide that the ways of develop entrepreneurial activities are to regulate the supply of human resources according to demand of society, and to guide it transform form the survival-type to opportunity-type. This requires the University education to be established the entrepreneurship-oriented mode, which will change the traditional university functions (teaching, research and economic) drastically, and to form the new coordination between entrepreneurship education and social demand based on market mechanisms. Three entrepreneurship-oriented models of university functions were advanced in this paper, and specific measures for them need to be formulated by universities with their own actual conditions. When the University education is coordinate with the demand of society through the entrepreneurial orientation, the problem of graduate employment will be solve more adequately. Acknowledgement: Thank the Humanities and social sciences key research base of Chinese Ministry of Education for the support of its major projects fund. (06JJD630012) Found: The Humanities and Social Sciences Key Research Fund of Chinese Ministry of Education (06JJD630012) References [1]. Network Entrepreneurship Research Center of Alibaba Business University. University Students Status and Trends of Internet Entrepreneurship. Beijing: Electronic Industry Press, 2010:2(in Chinese) [2]. Jiang Yanfu, Gao Jian, Cheng Yuan, Qiu Qiong. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report of China (2002). Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2003:13(in Chinese) [3]. Gao Jian, Cheng Yuan, Li Xibao, Jiang Yanfu. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report of China (2007) - Entrepreneurial Transformation and Employment Effect. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2008:2(in Chinese) [4]. Henry Ezra Kewei Ci, Translate by Wang Sunyu, Yuan Bentao. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rise of Entrepreneurial Science. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2007:1~9 (in Chinese) 171