1  Review of related researches and practices

  1.1  Review of the development and research of entrepreneurship education

1.2  The development and research of entrepreneurship education in China

1.3  Future development trend of entrepreneurship education

2   Researc

   ……

1  Review of related researches and practices

1.1  Review of the development and research 

of entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurship education has developed for more than 50 years;however,it began to flourish in major developed countries until the end of the 20th century with the mark—entrepreneurship research appeared everywhere in academic research(Shane,2000).In 1987,American Management Academy formally incorporated entrepreneurial research into management discipline as a subfield,declaring that entrepreneurship education began to be recognized by the education department of U.S.government with a legal status.Over the next 15 to 20 years,researches on entrepreneurial activities and spirit of entrepreneurs were widely conducted in management science,sociology,psychology and other disciplines.Entrepreneurship research presented explosive growth,thus providing profound theoretical basis and strong intellectual support for the modern development of entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship education aims at developing individuals with courage of starting a business,entrepreneurship skills of grasping opportunities identification and startup management,thus making them adapt to the future needs of society.In the knowledge economy society with globalization uncertainty and discontinuity,the core competitiveness of a country is more manifested in entrepreneurship and innovation.New curriculums and learning modes have been constantly developed and tested with the deepening of entrepreneurship theory research.Thus,entrepreneurship education is beyond the scope of university education,ranging from classroom to extracurricular aspects,communities,enterprises and the whole society.In addition,entrepreneurship education is influenced by social,political,economic,cultural and other factors.From the national level,entrepreneurship education has become the propeller of economic development.The goal of modern entrepreneurship education is to build entrepreneurial economy and entrepreneurial society.

 The development history of entrepreneurship education is long,thus the construction of entrepreneurship education system is more complete in some developed countries.This section analyzed the earliest background of entrepreneurship education,describing the research performance in the gradual development of entrepreneurship education.

1.1.1  Durance period of entrepreneurship education(before the 1970s)

Entrepreneurship education started since the first entrepreneurship course was set up in Harvard Business School in 1947.However,the dominance of entrepreneurship research field was entrepreneurial trait theory until the 1980s,thus entrepreneurship education had been developing slowly for more than 30 years.The description on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial economy function by economists represented by Schumpeter is the thought source of early entrepreneurial trait theory.On the one hand,the economists described entrepreneurs as individuals with series of extraordinary qualities,including undertaking risks,chasing uncertainty,profit driven,and starting innovation;on the other hand,abstract entrepreneurs were described with superior quality,thus forming the image of entrepreneurs as “born rather than formed”,meanwhile entrepreneurship was judged as special activities not available for normal people.For an extreme example,Schumpeter described characteristics of entrepreneurs in early classics—Theory of Economic Development with nearly a chapter:“Dreams and wishes of creating a private kingdom…The desires of conquering and fighting…Enjoy the pleasure of creating or just releasing their own energy and talent.”Actually,debate of whether entrepreneurship can be taught still existed after the 1980s,as Curran and Stanworth(1989)thought that entrepreneurship education had not costeffect,but they have already faded out from the mainstream entrepreneurship theory.

The discussions of economists on entrepreneurship had great effect on economic growth,thus making entrepreneurship research become a fashion.Behaviorists began to join entrepreneurship research with proposing academic language of more refining characteristic of entrepreneurs,quickly arousing strong repercussions with relevant theory and demonstration growing rapidly,and then the dominance of entrepreneurial trait theory began to be established.The most representative example was Entrepreneurial History Research Center of Harvard University founded in the 1960s.The establishment of the center,as the backbone of entrepreneurial trait theory,marked that research on entrepreneurial trait theory entered a golden age.One of its main tasks was to construct scientific way of recognizing entrepreneurs from general public.

1.1.2  Early development period of entrepreneurship education 

(from 1970s to 1990s)

In the 1970s,profound changes had taken place in the economy of western developed countries represented by the United States.Knowledge and technology instead of capital and labor became the main driving force of economic growth.It is mainly manifested that traditional industry became shrunk with a substantial reduction in jobs;meanwhile small business appeared in economy and society,which played an important role in providing a large number of employment opportunities and paying the tax to the state.Based on the situation,policymakers of many countries government judged that,the aspects—promoting further economic development of small and mediumsized enterprises and solving the serious problem of employment—could be considered as a whole,thus the macro economy would begin to be transformed from administrative economy to entrepreneurial economy.

 Kuratko(2005)pointed out those small enterprises created 1.6 million new jobs in the United States in 1996,employing 53% of the private work force.A large number of subsequent empirical studies draw the same or similar conclusions.With the change of business and economic environment,small and mediumsized enterprises sprang up and made contribution to the national economy with its status being confirmed,thus creating economic environment of entrepreneurship began to be considered in national macroeconomic policy level.With the increasing entrepreneurs and growing new ventures,the demand of obtaining entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to improve the success rate of entrepreneurship through entrepreneurship education was naturally produced(Godtfredsen,1995;Hayward and Sundes,2000).Therefore,entrepreneurship education is the inevitable result of economic and social development.

 For individuals especially for college students,layoffs and strategic restructuring of large enterprises and multinational companies had led to the shrink of traditional employment market since the 1980s(Westhead and Matlay,2005).Meanwhile,the benefits for serving in a big company—job security and remuneration stability had lost attraction(Jackson and Vitberg,1987).Students had been more and more disappointed at traditional big companies,while longing for their own business(Kolvereid,1996).As a career choice,entrepreneurship was widely recognized by the young and was considered as a more practical way for transforming from learning to work under the background of a sharp expansion in education system of colleges and universities(Matlay and Westhead,2005),and students believed that entrepreneurship education could improve the level of entrepreneurship(European Commission,2006).

 After producing demand of entrepreneurship education,people expected to meet the demand through the existing school education,but found that the general university education could not adapt to the real business world.Scholars began to research on the problem of adaptive correction in university education and entrepreneurship education,and they thought that the general education of business management had no significant effect on entrepreneurial tendency(Gupta,1992;Masters,1996;Brawer,1997,Greene and Crick,1998;Hostager and Decker,1999).The cultivation of entrepreneurship tendency is the core goal of entrepreneurship education.In this context,many countries began to introduce special entrepreneurship education in schools and colleges,thus entrepreneurship education began to be paid attention by governments and scholars.

 1)Breakthrough of entrepreneurial trait theory 

 Entrepreneurial trait theory had greatly restricted entrepreneurial education development,which was mainly reflected on the following aspects.On one hand,entrepreneurship was defined as special events of unusual people by entrepreneurial trait theory,and entrepreneurs were people born with special qualities.Entrepreneurship can be taught was denied,namely denying nurturing entrepreneurs though education,thus leading to losing ideological basis of entrepreneurship education.On the other hand,entrepreneurship research was only limited to the two problems based on the above judgment,one was “who are the entrepreneurs”,and the other was “how to identify the entrepreneurs”.In theory,it is difficult to get consistent research conclusion when the research objects are defined as abstract individuals with myths;from the results,entrepreneurial trait theory research had no consensus on the definition of entrepreneurs.In addition,commonly unique features of entrepreneur group had not been identified.Finally,the feature list that had been recognized were quite long and even contradictory and conflicting between each other,thus making it difficult to find out the real counterpart of individuals.Thus,the contradiction and the lack of entrepreneurship research resulted in insufficient theoretical basis of entrepreneurship education.

 Birch(1979)found that small enterprises with less than 20 employees created 66% of new jobs in the United States.In the late 1980s,entrepreneurship research was stalled;some scholars began to rethink entrepreneurial trait theory.To break through the bondage of entrepreneurial trait theory for entrepreneurship education,emphasis should be focused on break and through.Break refers to breaking through the entrepreneurial trait theory,through points out the ways and development direction of entrepreneurship research.Three representative scholars made important contributions in this process.Gartner(1988)challenged the basic assumption of trait theory,revealing the onesidedness and the underlying reasons of conflict and contradiction in results of entrepreneurial trait theory.“Entrepreneurs is not innate,but the acquired product promoted by the environment factors,there is no way focusing on entrepreneurial trait theory” systematically argued Gartner.Murray B.Low and Ian C.MacMillan(1987)systematically evaluated the progress and defects of entrepreneurial traits theory in aspects of research objects,theoretical perspective,research focus and methodology from a broader perspective,then they put forward future research direction.The two scholars contributed to clarifying the mission and task of entrepreneurship research,thus greatly promoting the transformation of entrepreneurship research from characteristics of entrepreneurs to entrepreneurial behavior and process.In addition,Stevenson and Gumpert(1985),Shane and Venkataraman(2000)also contributed to breaking through entrepreneurial trait theory and exploring new field of entrepreneurship research.

 Scholars of entrepreneurial trait theory were also in rethinking because the results of theoretical exploration with 20 years were unsatisfactory,and it was difficult to form a constructive dialogue between scholars,thus the study of entrepreneurial activity ceased to advance.After the late 1980s,the onesided view—entrepreneurship is special activity for a few people with talent—was gradually abandoned by scholars.Entrepreneurship research under the perspective of entrepreneurial process grew rapidly and received wide attention,gradually reaching a consensus in academia—entrepreneurial activity can be managed.The more than 10 years since then was golden development period for entrepreneurship research and the development of entrepreneurship education.The myth of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs was broken,and the thought of “education contributes to entrepreneurship” was initially accepted,thus eliminating the mental?blocks of entrepreneurship education.Meanwhile,a large number of entrepreneurial research achievements emerged with greatly enriching the theoretical basics of entrepreneurship education,thus creating conditions for setting up curriculum of entrepreneurship education.

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