Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education in Chinese Universities: Developments and Challenges

Innovation and entrepreneurship are increasingly associated with economic, technological and social development (Fagerberg, Fosaas, and Sapprasert 2012; Landström, Harirchi, and Åström 2012). As countries strive to strengthen their knowledge-based economies, policymaking has focused on how innovation and entrepreneurship activities can accelerate economic growth, promote industrial upgrading and transform employment structures (Bartels et al., 2012; World Bank, 2015). Universities, as organizations dedicated to knowledge transmission, production and application, have come under heighten pressure to demonstrate their contribution in nurturing talents, spurring innovation and supporting the development of knowledge-based economies (Etzkowitz 2003; Jessop 2017). Notably, universities’ engagement with innovation and entrepreneurship is often conceptualized by the term “entrepreneurial university.” This concept refers to universities that vigorously generate additional financial resources to support their operation through commercializing knowledge, forming collaborations beyond academia, and integrating an entrepreneurial culture (Clark 2001). The “triple helix model” further highlights the need for universities to engage deeply with industry and government to propel economic and social progress (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000). Undoubtedly, the emergence of such concepts has changed the positioning of universities from a support structure for innovation and entrepreneurship through knowledge generation, research output and personnel training to influential actor and equal partner (Etzkowitz 2003).

The provision of educational programs related to innovation and entrepreneurship in the higher education sector has attracted much attention, and there is considerable enthusiasm in university-based entrepreneurship education globally. As a result, the nature, relevance, contents, methods of implementation, and impact of entrepreneurship education have been the subject of growing academic scrutiny. Broadly speaking, entrepreneurship education consists of “any pedagogical programme or process of education for entrepreneurial attitudes and skills” (Fayolle, Gailly, and Lassas-Clerc 2006, p. 702). In practice, it often consists of three essential parts: curricula, fundamental elements, and publications (Katz 2003). More specifically, entrepreneurship education involves the design of courses and supporting infrastructure for entrepreneurial activities as well as the availability of relevant learning materials and academic research (Katz 2003). Research has demonstrated the impact of entrepreneurship education, especially its importance in developing students’ motivations and intentions to become entrepreneurs (Martin, McNally, and Kay 2013; Rauch and Hulsink 2015; Martínez-Gregorio, Badenes-Ribera, and Oliver 2021). In addition, innovation has always been an essential part of the discussions. Compared with general entrepreneurial activities, innovation-driven entrepreneurship has a stronger pulling effect on economic development (Soumitra, Bruno, and Sacha 2015). Therefore, higher education is also tasked with cultivating students’ competence in bridging the gap between university laboratories, market demand and societal needs, leveraging their core competitiveness of creativity, knowledge and technology (Xu 2021).

This special issue offers an up-to-date portrait of the fast-expanding academic field of innovation and entrepreneurship education in Chinese universities. To set the context, this editorial offers a brief history of entrepreneurship education in China and introduces five articles from Chinese publications that identify and discuss some of the key challenges in the sector.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education in China

The emergence of innovation and entrepreneurship education in the Chinese higher education sector has been the result of an interplay of multiple factors. China has witnessed considerable socioeconomic development since its Open Door Policy in 1978. Since then, small-sized businesses have been growing dramatically, constituting most businesses in the nation and providing most jobs (Li, Zhang, and Matlay 2003). The challenge of sustaining the development of a vibrant entrepreneurial economy and breaking the middle-income trap requires fostering entrepreneurial talent (Mei and Symaco 2022). Meanwhile, like its global counterparts, the Chinese higher education system has expanded tremendously since the late 1990s. As of 2021, the gross enrollment rate has reached a historical high of 57.8% (Ministry of Education (MoE) 2022). As a result, university graduates have been facing intense competition in a tough job market (Zhou and Xu 2012). In response, one of the key policy initiatives adopted by the Chinese government is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship education at higher education institutions, hoping to cope creatively with the need for continuous economic development and ease structural un(der)employment of its graduates (Zhou and Xu 2012; Meng and Li 2018). Besides, the global experience of entrepreneurship education and the active integration of the practices as a component of new economic strategies for fostering job creation in many countries served as a source of inspiration for the Chinese government and universities

While entrepreneurship education started in the US in the 1940s, it only entered the Chinese higher education sector in the late 1990s. Modeled after a similar competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Student Business Plan Competition started by Tsinghua University in 1998 became known as the birth of entrepreneurship education in China. Since then, China witnessed a surge in popularity for entrepreneurial plan competitions at universities on a national scale with broad social impact (Li, Zhang, and Matlay 2003; Li, Li, and Du 2013). Accompanying the competitions was a gradual formation of a viable structure to support and maximize the events’ outcomes, which include an increasing number of entrepreneurship-related mentoring, training, and teaching activities.

Leveraging the passion toward innovation and entrepreneurship among university students, the Ministry of Education (MoE) launched a pilot program for entrepreneurship education in 2002 at nine top Chinese universities, including Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Shanghai Jiaotong University. These elite universities were encouraged to try out different approaches of entrepreneurship education (Li, Zhang, and Matlay 2003; Zhou and Xu 2012). In the following year, the central government further introduced the annual Entrepreneurship Education Core Teacher Training, a move that represented a formal start to state-led entrepreneurship education (Li, Li, and Du 2013). In 2005, to learn from international experiences, the Communist Youth League Central Committee and the All-China Youth Federation collaborated with the International Labor Organization to promote the implementation of the KAB (Know About Business) Entrepreneurship Education (China) Program among Chinese universities. Since then, the KAB (China) Program has achieved profound impact in the areas of curriculum-building, teacher training and student practice (KAB Entrepreneurship Club 2022).

Challenged by the burgeoning number of university graduates and the deteriorating labor market hit by the 2008 global financial crisis, the Chinese government also accelerated its pace in institutionalizing entrepreneurship education as part of the national development strategy. In 2010, the MoE issued the Recommendations Regarding the Strong Promotion of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education at Higher Education Institutions and Self-Initiated Entrepreneurship by College Students, marking the first formal appearance of the concept of “innovation and entrepreneurship education” in higher education policy documents (Meng and Li 2018). It was intended to emphasize the use of innovative outcomes in starting businesses and encourage the cultivation of innovative talents for high-growth entrepreneurship (Xu 2021). Since then, various national ministries, such as MoE and the Ministry of Science and Technology, issued a series of policies and initiatives to build an entrepreneurship-friendly environment for students. Governments at each level also started to advocate entrepreneurship education in universities and invited active participation by the society (Zhou and Xu 2012). In 2012, the MoE further launched the Recommendations of the Ministry of Education Regarding Comprehensive Improvements to the Quality of Higher Education, instructing innovation and entrepreneurship issues to be integrated throughout the entire process of talent cultivation. Entrepreneurship education has since been transformed from an expedient measure to address employment problems to an essential means of comprehensively cultivating students’ general character and multi-faceted talent (Xia, Shumin, and Yifeng 2016).

In 2015, the issue of the national framework for Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship ushered in a so-called “golden era” for entrepreneurship in China (He, Lu, and Qian 2019). The State Council launched the Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education in Higher Education, clarifying the core tasks needed to achieve this strategic goal and bringing forth an ambitious role for universities in advancing innovation and entrepreneurship education (Ministry of Education (MoE), 2019). The nature of entrepreneurship education changed substantially from narrowly defined elite education for an interested minority to a comprehensive concept to be integrated throughout the process of talent development as a core component in university-level teaching and learning. Universities increased entrepreneurship education resources and activities and encouraged students to take credit-bearing entrepreneurship courses regardless of their disciplinary fields. Various entrepreneurship institutes mushroomed across nearly all types and levels of higher education institutions, functioning as the primary vehicle for implementing innovation and entrepreneurship education. According to MoE, as of 2019, more than 28,000 courses have been introduced accumulatively at higher education institutions nationwide, benefiting 6.3 million students (Ministry of Education (MoE), 2019). In 2019 alone, 3,8400 startup projects were founded by students from over 1,000 higher education institutions. Behind these courses and programs were 28,000 full-time teachers and 93,000 part-time teachers (Ministry of Education (MoE), 2019).

Despite a relatively brief history of innovation and entrepreneurship education, China has made considerable progress in its experiment with this new educational concept. However, beyond the impact reported and achievement celebrated, salient problems exist in practicality, especially in terms of the quality of teaching and learning, curriculum contents, teacher training, assessment, support mechanism and other areas (Li, Li, and Du 2013; Bell 2020). The purpose of this special issue is to lay out the current development and key challenges in innovation and entrepreneurship education in Chinese universities.

In This Special Issue

As shown by its development trajectory, university-based innovation and entrepreneurship education in China has been largely formulated and advanced in a top-down manner (Wright, Feng, and Zheng 2022). In reality, many institutions treated the initiative no more than a political task and prioritized piecing together existing resources with a focus on infrastructure building and pursuing short-term achievements (Niu and Li 2016; Xue, Lu, and Li 2016). How universities can construct a sound organizational structure for long-term, effective innovation and entrepreneurship education has been a sustained discussion. The first article by Zhang, Lei and Luo examines the development of entrepreneurship education with a particular focus on the organizational models adopted by Chinese universities. While “entrepreneurship institutes” (创业学院) have been normalized as the primary entity for implementing entrepreneurship education, they are organized in diverse ways. The authors identified three types of models based on the institutes’ governance structures, operating mechanisms and designated functions. They further illustrated these models with examples and analyzed their respective strengths, pitfalls and potential areas for improvement. The authors argued that universities have an agentic role to play in advancing entrepreneurial education and should improve their governance on entrepreneurship institutes, clarify educational objectives and mobilize multisectoral resources in a more effective manner.

The fast expansion of entrepreneurship education across universities has caused concerns over the shortage of qualified teachers. The contradiction between the high demand for innovation and entrepreneurship education and the lag in supply of teachers in quantity, quality and stability is impeding its development in higher education. Who should teach innovation and entrepreneurship and how to support teacher professional development have become a core challenge. While academics are crucial for teaching theoretical knowledge and conducting research in entrepreneurship, adjuncts and practitioners who are more familiar with consulting and practicing entrepreneurship are also indispensable to bridge the classroom and the reality. In the second article, Wang and Long investigated the impact of teachers’ competence structure on the quality of innovation and entrepreneurship education and the mediating role of organizational support from the universities. Drew on a sample of 12,596 faculty teaching innovation and entrepreneurship from 1,231 higher education institutions across China, the authors found most faculty were new to the field with little professional knowledge or practical experience in entrepreneurship. Moreover, the lack of sense of belonging and achievement in the field posed additional challenges as majority of these teachers were temporarily transferred to the new role from their original jobs. Yet, the organizational support from universities hardly matched teachers’ needs for professional development, depriving the quality of entrepreneurship education. The authors proposed recommendations to universities based on these findings.

The impact of entrepreneurship education is often assessed through students’ entrepreneurial intentions for its usefulness in predicting entrepreneurial behavior. While researchers have largely demonstrated positive influence between the two (Rauch and Hulsink 2015; Martínez-Gregorio, Badenes-Ribera, and Oliver 2021), debates exist on how such influence occur and if the teaching and learning practices matter (Solomon, Duffy, and Tarabishy 2002; Nabi et al. 2017). While lectures and case studies remain the most widely used pedagogical combination for entrepreneurship education, scholars have long argued that the set of values and abilities emphasized by such education system was contrary to an entrepreneurial spirit (Gibb 1993) and pedagogies that stress real-life, hands-on and experiential experiences need to be prioritized (Solomon, Duffy, and Tarabishy 2002; Pihie and Salleh Abdullah Sani 2009; Neck and Greene 2011). The third article by Pan and Lu provides insights from the Chinese context of mass innovation and entrepreneurship education. The authors attempted to disentangle the often-obscured relational mechanisms among entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. They further divided entrepreneurship education into theoretical and practical based on the orientation of the teaching and learning practices to investigate their respective influences on students’ entrepreneurial intention. The paper draws on a large-scale online survey of students graduated from higher education institutions in Shaanxi Province in 2017. Based on 20,716 valid questionnaires, the authors concluded that theoretical entrepreneurship education, particularly entrepreneurship courses, demonstrated a stronger influence on students’ entrepreneurial intention than practical entrepreneurship education, including competitions, training and practice. In addition, relative to the direct effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention among the students, the indirect effect produced on entrepreneurial intention through entrepreneurial self-efficacy was higher. Nevertheless, they also found that the overall levels of entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial self-efficacy among the surveyed students remained low. Their findings offer useful considerations for the future implementation of entrepreneurship education, especially in terms of coverage and quality.

Equally important to universities’ internal practices of entrepreneurship education is their external support systems with strong institutional support, sustained financial resources and appropriate organizational models (Fetters et al. 2010). The fourth article contributed by Zhuo focuses specifically on investigating the implementation of innovation and entrepreneurship education among universities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), which has been positioned as the international science and technology hub of China with tremendous emphasis on development powered by “innovation and entrepreneurship.” Through a random sampling of 5,021 students from 58 colleges and universities in GBA, the author explored students’ levels of satisfaction toward innovation and entrepreneurship education and the integration of university teaching and learning with the regional innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Despite the overall satisfactory responses, the author highlights several key problems that need to be addressed, including the difficulty in leveraging regional innovation and entrepreneurial resources for university entrepreneurship education, insufficient integration of professional and practical practices in teaching entrepreneurship education, the lack of multi-sectorial collaboration and teacher shortage.

While innovation and entrepreneurship education are spreading widely across Chinese universities, concerns over its quality have been raised by scholars and practitioners. As in other contexts, methods for assessing innovation and entrepreneurship education in China are yet to be well defined, neither are there accepted standardized means for measuring effectiveness and impact. The lack of consensus could be due to the heterogeneity of factors characterizing entrepreneurship education, including institutional goals, target student groups, educational objectives, and the effect of time and contextual variables (Fayolle, Gailly, and Lassas-Clerc 2006; Xu 2021). The final article by Xu helps to address this issue directly. Xu proposed a three-dimensional structural Value-Process-Result (VPR) evaluation model for innovation and entrepreneurship education through the grounded theory approach with data collected from interviews with 54 stakeholders in governments, higher education institutions and enterprises across six provinces. The evaluation model attempts to adapt to the actual needs of the development of innovation and entrepreneurship education in China and integrates some of the key debates, such as the spiritual and realistic values of entrepreneurship education, the developmental and performance evaluation, as well as the short-term and long-term outcomes. This contextualized model offers a sound reference for entrepreneurial education evaluation in Chinese universities.

In less than a decade, the Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship framework has swiftly moved across virtually all levels and types of higher education institutions in China. In China’s examination-oriented tradition of higher education, the impact of entrepreneurship education on contemporary college students is unprecedented. Its long term impact, however, remains far from clear. What challenges lie ahead for in entrepreneurship education in Chinese universities? What lessons may be drawn from China’s experience with entrepreneurship education for higher education institutions elsewhere? The five translated articles in this special issue of Chinese Education and Society provide a door into the achievements, challenges, debates, and possibilities for the evolution of innovation and entrepreneurship in Chinese higher education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yutong Wang

Yutong Wang is a PhD candidate at the academic unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education (SCAPE), Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong.

Ying Ma

Ying Ma is Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Higher Education, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.