Social entrepreneurship in higher education: challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT

Social entrepreneurship (SE) had been introduced in the university as one of the efforts to nurture future social entrepreneurs. SE courses established at the university level with a combination of cooperation from the local community and industry give a more effective impact on the local community. The knowledge and skills taught from universities regardless of the academic or cultural background can be used to balance the social problems in the community with the development of social innovation to solve the issues. However, several challenges delayed further development of a successful SE programme in higher education. This research employs the systematic literature review (SLR) which utilizes in-depth and absolute evaluation of related literature on the research topic. Four challenges have been encountered include; the design of SE curricula, financial and funding problems, lack of professionals to teach SE courses, and prohibitive social and university environment issues. This research has also suggested some best practices include; more SE awareness programmes, university management in solving funding problems, preparing SE coaching professionals, and setting up more university-industry collaborations. This paper proposes suggestions to counter the challenges and leverage the social network as an innovative technological alternative and giving more opportunities for improved social benefits.

KEYWORDS:

• Social entrepreneurship
• higher education
• systematic literature review
• challenges
• social network

Acknowledgments

This work is financially supported by grant RP044A-17HNE from University of Malaya, Malaysia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Muhammad Hamirul Hamizan Roslan

Muhammad Hamirul Hamizan Roslan is a Master student at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT), University of Malaya (UM). He conducts research focus on social networks and social entrepreneurship.

Suraya Hamid

Suraya Hamid is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. She was involved in various research in the areas of information systems specifically on social informatics, educational technology, information services, e-learning, and data analytics.

Mohamad Taha Ijab

Mohamad Taha Ijab is a research fellow at the Institute of IR4.0 (IIR4.0), The National University of Malaysia (UKM). He researches in the areas of big data analytics, visualization, social media analytics, cloud computing, environmental informatics, innovation process modelling, and business process management.

Farrah Dina Yusop

Farrah Dina Yusop is an Associate Professor and concurrently the Deputy Director of UM’s Academic Enhancement and Leadership Development Centre, UM. Her research in the areas of higher education, Web 2.0, social media, educational games, and mobile learning.

Azah Anir Norman

Azah Anir Norman is a senior lecturer at the Department of Information Systems, FCSIT, UM. Her research focusing on Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), ICT Secure Applications, Human factors of security and privacy and Information Security Governance, Security in the Social Platform and e-Commerce Security.