Entrepreneurship Education for Training the Talent in China: Exploring the Influencing Factors and Their Effects

Abstract

The essence of Chinese entrepreneurship education is to build an “upgraded” version of higher education that can enable China’s modernization through innovations and the sustainable development of the planet, in order to comprehensively and scientifically measure the magnitude of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for training the innovative talent, investigate the influencing factors of efficiency, and uncover the existing problems. This study was based on The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp), conducting quantitative research on 606 typical students from 211 undergraduate universities in China who achieved recognition for entrepreneurship achievements at the provincial level or above. This study found that entrepreneurship education has a significant effect on students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, and in descending order of effectiveness, it improves 15 literacies, such as initiative; these are categorized into three domains: innovative action, innovative resources, and innovative thinking. Meanwhile, the more in-depth the entrepreneurship education reform, the more significant the efficiency. Second, there are significant differences in efficacy against the background of different durations of participation, score rankings, and numbers of achievements. There are no significant differences in efficacy between different disciplines and educational backgrounds. Third, the experience of the project leader has a significantly positive effect on efficiency. The current lack of innovative team building is the main factor affecting the effectiveness of innovative talent training in China.

1. Introduction

At present, the urgent need for sustainable development is an important guide for the cultivation of innovative talents. It admits no delay in the reform of higher education. Entrepreneurship education is the mainstream trend of international higher education reform [1]. Existing studies generally show that the concept of internationally led entrepreneurship education is equivalent to China’s innovation and entrepreneurship education. Internationally, it is considered that innovation is part of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship education actually includes innovation education [2]. Local scholars have more aptly described entrepreneurship as a process in which “individuals put their ideas into practice” [3]. Thus, it can be said that, in essence, international entrepreneurship education coincides with China’s innovation and entrepreneurship education. In order to facilitate reading, this concept is uniformly expressed as “entrepreneurship education” in this article. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, “Youth is the hope of a country and a nationality. Innovation is the soul of social progress. Entrepreneurship is an important way to promote economic and social development and improve people’s livelihood.” [4]. It can be seen that innovative talents are crucial for the sustainable development of human society. After the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development formulated the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which cover 17 goals, such as the eradication of poverty, the eradication of hunger, health, and well-being. As the creators and beneficiaries of sustainable development, people need to continuously apply innovative thinking and methods to solve sustainable development issues [5,6]; that is, innovative talents are the key elements in solving sustainable development issues. Entrepreneurship education needs to play a deep and decisive role in training innovative talents to solve sustainable development issues.

Practice is the criterion for testing truth [7]. Facts have confirmed that entrepreneurship education has played an important role in solving sustainable development issues. In 2003, four government departments, including the Ministry of Education of China, jointly launched China’s Far West Program. This program selects university students with excellent performance and high comprehensive literacy to carry out 1–3 years of work in impoverished areas in western China, such as by supporting education, medical care, agriculture, and legal aid. It also awards the International Youth Poverty Eradication Award and other medals to outstanding university student volunteers. In the program, the work content of supporting education is engaging in education and teaching management work in primary and secondary schools in impoverished townships in western China, thus bringing high-quality educational resources and ideas to local primary and secondary students. This plays an important role in promoting educational fairness and achieving educational goals. Supporting healthcare involves carrying out medical and health work in poor areas to promote the health and well-being of people of all ages. Supporting agriculture refers to engaging in agricultural technology and poverty alleviation work in poverty-stricken areas to assist with the agricultural and economic development of poverty-stricken areas. Legal aid involves providing free legal assistance in poor areas in order to build a peaceful and inclusive society. Subsequently, in 2008, the Ministry of Education of China jointly organized the University Student Village Official Program, which recruited university students with excellent comprehensive literacy and outstanding organizational and management skills to carry out grassroots work in impoverished villages for 2–3 years. They were responsible for publicizing and implementing policies, promoting science, technology, and culture, and accelerating economic development, thus assisting in the alleviation of poverty and the provision of prosperity in impoverished villages. At the same time, by the end of 2014, the number of self-employed university student village officials who had terminated their employment terms reached 18,000, which spontaneously promoted the economic development of poor areas and solved the employment problems of many people in poverty [8]. In summary, entrepreneurship education has played a significant role in eradicating poverty and hunger, promoting well-being and high-quality education, and creating decent work and social justice. It is also an important factor for China to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020. In addition, we firmly believe that entrepreneurship education also has indispensable and far-reaching value in solving other aspects of sustainable development issues.

Therefore, research on “educating people” in entrepreneurship education and the factors influencing it has become particularly important. It is a hot topic in the current international research community, but it is also a frontier topic [9]. There is a key for universities to cultivate innovative talent to build a sustainable society. With the continuous popularization of higher education and the urgent need for sustainable development, coupled with the strong advocacy of “broad-spectrum” entrepreneurship education [10,11], an endless stream of students will pour into innovative talent cultivation programs. They will be an important force in addressing sustainable development. Then, these research topics will become even more urgent. Entrepreneurship education for a country and society is a means of developing innovative talent resources to address sustainable development. For universities, this is an important basis for demonstrating their own social values, and for students, it is an effective way to improve their own innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. Universities are at the core, connecting all parties. As the main front of entrepreneurship education reform and the key subject for exerting the effects of entrepreneurship education, it is urgent for them to clarify the effects of entrepreneurship education and to determine how to better exert the effects of entrepreneurship education, so as to build a sustainable society. Therefore, the research objective of this article focuses on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and its influencing factors. The EU claims that the core of entrepreneurship education is developing students’ entrepreneurship literacy [12]. Chinese scholars have also conducted preliminary explorations of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and its influencing factors around the core concepts of developing students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. This study takes the 15 individual innovation and entrepreneurship literacies pointed out by the EU’s Entrepreneurship Competence Framework as a basis, and supplements and formulates the measurement points of each innovation and entrepreneurship literacies according to China’s national conditions and the research results from scholars in the same area, and then analyzes the changes of each of the innovation and entrepreneurship literacies through virtual calculation, which can be used to research the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and the factors influencing it. On this basis, this article explores the following three research objectives through an empirical study of typical student groups from 211 undergraduate universities in China:

RO 1. The effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for training the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy and the differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education among different universities.

RO 2. Whether there is a difference in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for training the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy under a different educational background, discipline, duration of participation, score ranking, and number of achievements.

RO 3. Whether the experience of project leaders has a significant impact on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for training the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy and whether there is a potential for improvement in the cultivation of student teams in China’s entrepreneurship education.

2. Literature Review and Interpretation Framework

2.1. Entrepreneurship Education in Supporting Sustainable Development

Education that is oriented towards the development of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy (such us creativity, perseverance, and values) in students will contribute to building a sustainable society [13]. Generally, education is oriented towards the construction and maintenance of a sustainable future, the inheritance and development of human civilization, and the achievement of a long-term social purpose [14]. However, against the backdrop of the urgent and enormous challenges facing the Earth, the goal of talent cultivation in higher education has been upgraded from addressing ordinary “knowledge-based talents” to addressing “innovative talents” that combine knowledge, skills, and values. Higher education needs to be aligned with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) [15]. ESD refers to knowledge delivery that ensures a balanced economic, social, and environmental development, and that critically develops and embodies knowledge and actions for sustainability [16,17]. Although education based on key literacies can help bridge the gap between knowledge and action [18], higher education, which plays a crucial role in the cultivation of the new generation’s talents, still deviates from this goal and does not link knowledge and action [19]. As a result, the “saliency” of unsustainable development and the intensification of the weaknesses of ESD have led to a more urgent and long-term demand for education to solve the problem of sustainable development. Entrepreneurship education can effectively solve this problem; it is similar to science education, which had an unstoppable effect on development in the era of SDGs and post-MDGs [20]. However, unlike science education, entrepreneurship education in China is part of higher education, and it is a public education for all university students. In summary, Chinese entrepreneurship education can be described as a new form of ESD for all.

First, entrepreneurship education cultivates innovative citizens by developing students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy [21,22], thereby promoting sustainable development. On the one hand, education focuses on actions that change attitudes and build awareness for life, thus developing a lifelong practice for sustainable development. On the other hand, education can generate knowledge through critical action and reflection, thus developing active and critical citizenship to promote sustainable development [19]. In China, one of the main forms of entrepreneurship education is the innovation and entrepreneurship competition. For example, the China College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition is hosted by a specific department every year. It collects student teams from around the world and has emerging industries or major issues as the theme of the competition. Student teams develop their own projects around the theme of the competition under the guidance of universities and instructors. In the process of project research, students need to explore the pain points and problems faced in sustainable development based on classroom knowledge, understand the current situation of human society, and then create and develop their own research projects while considering their feasibility, value, and innovation. After the research is completed, the team members need to create an entrepreneurial plan for the project that describes and simulates how to implement and transform the project in order to help solve sustainable development issues, such as those of social employment, economic development, and environmental pollution, leading to the achievement of SDGs such as no poverty, decent work and economic growth, and climate action, as shown in the figure below [23]. Throughout the entire competition process, a student team is always guided in solving sustainable development issues, learning to grasp the current development status of humans in the locality of the project, and, ultimately, creating a project with social value based on the joint efforts of the students in the team. On the one hand, it can be observed that entrepreneurship education provides a platform for competition and exchange, allowing student teams to make the most of their youthful wisdom and resulting in a range of effective solutions to sustainable development problems. On the other hand, even though society can provide many decent jobs, students still need to be fully capable of doing so. Entrepreneurship education largely develops students’ hands-on practical abilities, problem-solving abilities, and sustainable development values so that they have sufficient capacity to perform decent work and have more opportunities to obtain decent work. In other words, at a micro level, by focusing on the individual, entrepreneurship education creates more decent jobs for individual students. At the same time, entrepreneurship education can also cultivate students’ critical thinking [24] and then cause students to produce critical behavior and knowledge for sustainable development.

Second, entrepreneurship education cultivates leaders and innovators to promote sustainable development. In the long run, these innovative talents with innovation and entrepreneurship literacy can develop into leaders of enterprises or innovators in enterprises based on their own situations to address sustainable development [25,26]. Whether they are leaders of enterprises or innovators in enterprises, they can promote entrepreneurship, social production, and technological progress. In terms of promoting entrepreneurship, it is a key element in the field of sustainable development and can improve various economic, social, and environmental aspects [27], in addition to its direct creation of more decent jobs and economic growth for society in order to address sustainable development. It has the potential to stimulate economic growth and promote innovation [28,29]. That is, entrepreneurship education can also directly address sustainable development issues such as the eradication of poverty, the improvement of the environment, and the promotion of innovation. Sustainable development is an inevitable product of the development of social productivity and technological progress [30]. Specifically, the development of social productivity and technological progress implies the upgrading and innovation of human science and technology, which encompasses agricultural science and technology, as mentioned in the introduction, as well as industrial science and technology, energy and environmental technology, etc. These upgrades and innovations in science and technology allow human beings to effectively increase food production, upgrade industries and infrastructures, create cheap and clean energy, and address other aspects of sustainable development issues, such as the healthy development of the Earth’s ecological environment. For example, as shown in Figure 1, entrepreneurship education can also directly address the SDGs, such us zero hunger, industry, innovation and infrastructure, affordable and clean energy.

2.2. Research Status and Hypothesis

Entrepreneurship education emerged in the middle of the 20th century, originated in the United States, and grew throughout the world. Myles Mace taught the first entrepreneurship course at Harvard Business School in 1947, and for the following half century, entrepreneurship education in the United States mushroomed into a booming state [31]. On the global level, an international education wave that entrepreneurship education was empowering the development of the times rapidly spread. What followed was a globalized research wave in the value theory, system theory, and development theory of entrepreneurship education, which comprised the three core camps. For example, relevant research focusing on value theory showed that entrepreneurship education can affect the self-efficacy, entrepreneurial mentality, and entrepreneurial attitude of entrepreneurs [32]. Green entrepreneurship self-efficacy and green entrepreneurship orientation have a positive relationship with green innovation, while green innovation significantly contributes to economic performance [33]. Entrepreneurship education significantly develops learners’ entrepreneurial intentions, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial mentality [34]. Entrepreneurship education helps students form an entrepreneurial mentality, skills, and abilities [35]. At the same time, educational institutions and social and international organizations, such as Babson College, have played a particularly crucial role in promoting the development of entrepreneurship education. For example, Babson College launched “Global Entrepreneurship Observation” [36], “Researchers in entrepreneurship education at Babson” [37], and other very influential flagship projects, which have laid a solid foundation for research on entrepreneurship education in the international community.

However, direct evaluations of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and empirical research on the factors influencing the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education are very scarce in China. Most of the existing studies were theoretically narrated through literature collations, which often lacked timeliness and empirical support in consideration of the background of the rapid development of China’s social economy and cultural education. Guo Hui and others from Huazhong University of Science and Technology conducted qualitative research on 31 leaders of innovation projects in science and engineering and concluded that students could have improvements in their skills, selection, and preparation for postgraduate education/career paths, their understanding and application of professional knowledge, their psychological and social gains, and their recognition of the qualities and attitudes required for research by participating in entrepreneurship education with innovation projects [38]. Lai Meizhan from the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications conducted in-depth interviews with eight typical students and coded the contents. She found that the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in universities covered 10 literacies, namely, achievement motivation, opportunity recognition and utilization, interpersonal relationships, quick thinking, professional knowledge, willpower, learning abilities, self-confidence, self-management abilities, and independence [2]. Consequently, we propose the following hypothesis:

H1. 

Entrepreneurship education has obvious effectiveness in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

On the basis of qualitative research and full attention to reliability and validity tests, quantitative research on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and its influencing factors among college students in China began to appear in a small number, which slightly filled the research gap in this field in China. Existing studies have shown that participation in entrepreneurship education activities can help improve students’ seven innovative and entrepreneurial literacies, such as the ability to analyze and solve problems [39]. Entrepreneurship education contributes to cultivating university students’ innovative thinking [40]. Considering core rankings, different universities, and numbers of achievements as factors of differences in innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, the continuous time invested by students had no significant influence on innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, but the investment quality had a significant influence on it [41]. As for the problem that coming from different universities is a factor of differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, this study suggests that this is the result of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education reform in each university, independently from the level of the university. Score rankings, discipline, and investment degrees have a significant effect on the effectiveness of students’ entrepreneurship education [42]. Although these studies explored the direct effect of entrepreneurship education and its influencing factors based on the increase in innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, the research processes were usually only aimed at a few individual universities and students who had participated in innovation and entrepreneurship activities in a simple sense. This study found that, first, there were significant differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for students in different universities. Second, during on-the-spot interviews, the research group also found that although some students had participated in entrepreneurship activities, most of them were activities at the college level or below, and the actual participation of students was very little or even only nominal. Third, entrepreneurship education projects in universities are extensive [43], so it was necessary to cover as many forms of entrepreneurship education activities as possible in order to evaluate the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Therefore, the existing relevant research in China generally has some problems, such as its limited sample scope, the quality of the entrepreneurship activities, the participation of the respondents who were studied, and the insufficient comprehensiveness of the entrepreneurship activities investigated.

In summary, this study aimed to break through the dilemma of the current state of research. Based on relevant findings from existing studies, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H2. 

A different university has an obvious difference in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

H3. 

Educational background has a significant effect on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy

H4. 

Discipline has a significant effect on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

H5. 

Duration of participation has a significant effect on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

H6. 

Score ranking has a significant effect on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

H7. 

The number of achievements has a significant effect on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

2.3. Research Framework for Entrepreneurship Education’s Effectiveness

A comprehensive review showed that EntreComp is highly representative and referential. Based on the literature on the components of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy by scholars or groups from different countries, this research group analyzed the EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework [44] released by the European Union in 2016 by summarizing the actual situation in the study and then found 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies that it covered with theoretical reference value. Existing studies also confirmed the suitability of using EntreComp for the evaluation of entrepreneurship education [45]. Although scholars from different countries have explored and proposed a series of frameworks for innovation and entrepreneurship literacy to fit their respective research priorities, it is not difficult to find after a careful analysis of their subdivided investigation contents that EntreComp covers almost all of the components of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy that are relatively common in China and abroad. Chu Hongqi, the deputy director of the Peking Institute of Education Sciences, also pointed out that against the background of globalization, the challenges faced by all countries are common, so the contents of core literacy are also similar [46]. EntreComp itself is also a milestone achievement in the field of international entrepreneurial education research and practice. Through comprehensive investigation, revision, and improvement, the framework scientifically divides innovative and entrepreneurship literacies into three major areas: innovative thinking, innovative resources, and innovative actions; these areas cover 15 innovative and entrepreneurship literacies, with a total of 60 observation points. This division accurately embodies the relevant individual literacies needed to carry out entrepreneurship activities. In the meantime, EntreComp gave a clear description and keyword summary for these 15 literacies, which clearly showed the characteristics and investigation points of innovative entrepreneurs.

Based on this, EntreComp was selected as the overall research framework with the premise of comprehensive consideration. At the same time, 60 observation points in EntreComp were appropriately selected according to the differences between China’s national conditions and the conditions in the European Union, a supranational political organization, resulting in different values and different education focus areas [9]. In addition, the two items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy were flexibly adjusted. Specifically, the knowledge literacy described by EntreComp integrates students’ practice and application of course knowledge. On the level of communication and cooperation, the original listening and teamwork investigation items were expanded to cover listening and understanding, cooperation and communication, reading, expression, and material writing. Then, according to the adjusted EntreComp, we conducted a semistructured interview with 10 typical students who had multiple entrepreneurship achievements. This interview aimed to judge the degree of importance of each innovation and entrepreneurship literacy examined in this study for the development of the typical students’ lives by communicating with them. In the interview records, we found that the 10 interviewees thought highly of the importance of the 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies. The research group also invited three entrepreneurship experts to evaluate the importance of the 15 items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy by using the five-level Likert scoring system. According to statistical calculations, the expert scores for the 15 items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy in university students investigated in this study were all greater than or equal to four points, indicating that all 15 items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy had high importance. Based on the evaluation of typical students and the expert ratings, this study investigated 15 supplementary and adjusted innovation and entrepreneurship literacies for university students.

3. Research Methodology

3.1. Design

This study was based on a quantitative investigation aimed at specific student groups nationwide with the aim of exploring their entrepreneurship gains, motivations, and dilemmas in order to examine the effects of entrepreneurship education and its influencing factors.

3.2. Research Methods and Tools

Based on practical characteristics involving “multiple points and broad areas”, this study adopted and strictly followed the principles of purposive sampling and convenience sampling. In the process of implementation, the samples were mainly extracted from the contact groups of finals of various provincial and national competitions, the exchange groups of summer camps or exempted students, the contact groups of entrepreneurship programs in universities, and other resources of the research group.

This study adopted the self-compiled “Entrepreneurship Education Effectiveness Questionnaire”, which took more than two months to complete. The main questions are shown in Appendix A. It consisted of four parts: a measurement of entrepreneurship education’s effectiveness, an investigation of participation in entrepreneurship education activities, recording of background information, and receipt of red-envelope remuneration. The effectiveness of entrepreneurship education was based on the increase in students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. In terms of difficulty, the whole questionnaire can be described as a sequential reduction of difficulty from the beginning to the end. The first three parts of the questionnaire were divided into three pages of jumping answers, and questions for detecting logical mistakes were set between each part to prevent the occurrence of abnormal answers. Multiple measures were taken to ensure the recovery of high-quality sample data to make the investigation process more scientific and reasonable and to make the results more real and effective.

The first part was a self-assessment of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, for which a five-level Likert scale was adopted. This part aimed to evaluate the effect of entrepreneurship education on university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy and to explore the factors of entrepreneurship education that influenced the effectiveness of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy in combination with subsequent independent variables. In terms of content composition, it mainly consisted of innovative thinking, innovative resources, and innovative actions. “Innovative thinking” covered five innovative and entrepreneurship literacies—opportunity recognition, innovation and creation, vision, and value ethics—while “innovative resources” covered five innovative and entrepreneurship literacies—self-efficacy, motivation and perseverance, resource coordination, knowledge literacy, and organization mobilization. “Innovation action” covered five literacies of innovation and entrepreneurship: being proactive, plan management, risk coping, communication and cooperation, and reflective learning. Each quality consisted of 2–4 questions to form a second-level scale. All of the questions formed a first-level scale, so there were 45 measuring questions and 15 s-level scales in total. All 45 questions were answered under the precondition of participating in entrepreneurship activities. In order to reduce the psychological fatigue of students, a single self-rating scale was designed in a matrix style, and all questions were formulated in a single sentence. In addition, this study also attached great importance to the statement of the questionnaire’s content and adopted a structured questionnaire format. In particular, this allowed such problems as serious bias in the results bias caused by inconsistent wording in questions’ formulation to be avoided [47]. The second part was the investigation of the sample students’ participation in various entrepreneurship education activities. Through a literature review and investigation of two national universities that demonstrated the deepening entrepreneurship education reform, it was found that, at present, the activities of entrepreneurship education in China mainly include innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, science and technology competitions, scientific research projects, scientific research creation, student associations, mass entrepreneurship courses, training lectures, enterprise practice, entrepreneurship practice, etc. Therefore, this part investigated the participation of the respondents in these nine entrepreneurship education activities. The third part involved the inspection of background information. It included students’ educational backgrounds, universities, disciplines, and score rankings, as proposed in existing studies. It also included the time span of participation in entrepreneurship activities, whether they had entrepreneurship achievements at the provincial level or above, whether they had served as project leaders, the number of entrepreneurship achievements at the provincial level or above, their motivation for participating in entrepreneurship activities, and an open-ended question proposed by the research group: “What is the biggest difficulty you encountered in the process of entrepreneurship activities?”. The fourth part was a random red-envelope payment ranging from 3 to 10 RMB, which was used to provide appropriate incentives for students to effectively answer the questionnaire so as to improve the questionnaire’s response quality and attract qualified students to participate in the survey. In terms of the technological aspect, verification of students’ real names, login authentication, and a frequency limit were added.

3.3. Research Participants

In this study, 606 students who had entrepreneurship achievements in entrepreneurship activities at or above the provincial level were selected as samples. The details are as follows. A total of 2343 questionnaires were distributed, and 958 were recovered. According to the length of the content and the normal reading speed, 83 questionnaires with unreasonable response times were removed. A total of 214 questionnaires did not meet the requirements for attaining entrepreneurship achievements at the provincial level or above, and 32 questionnaires with inconsistent logic were removed (According to the purpose of the survey, samples of students with actual participation quality needed to be collected. Therefore, this study added some questions for detecting logical errors to the questionnaire. For example, if the respondents indicated not having participated in scientific research and creation activities, such as patents and papers, in the second part, but they indicated that they had scientific research and creation achievements, such as patents and papers, in the third part, the questionnaires were considered illogical and were eliminated). Nine questionnaires without identification were also removed (According to the principle of recovering high-quality and valid samples, questionnaires with the same results for the 45 items of the self-rating scale in Part 1 were defined as unidentifiable questionnaires). Meanwhile, based on the different performance results for entrepreneurship education in undergraduate universities and vocational colleges and on the sample size, this study has removed the 14 questionnaires that came from vocational colleges [48]. A total of 606 valid questionnaires covering 211 universities in China were collected. See

Table 1. Composition of the sample.

Variable	Type	Number of People	Percent
Educational Background	Undergraduate	513	84.7%
	Postgraduate	93	15.3%
Project Leader Experience	Yes	357	58.9%
	No	249	41.1%
Discipline	Science and Engineering	350	56.0%
	Economic Management	118	18.9%
	Literature and History	100	16.0%
	Else	57	9.1%
University	A	50	8.2%
	B	41	6.8%
	C	38	6.3%
	D	51	8.4%
	Else	426	70.3%
Duration of Participation	Less than 1 year	208	34.3%
	1–2 years	313	51.7%
	3 years or above	85	14.0%
Score Ranking	The top 10%	256	42.2%
	11–30%	231	38.1%
	31% or above	119	19.7%
Number of Achievements	1–3	408	67.3%
	4–10	133	21.9%
	11 or above	65	10.8%

below for the sample’s composition of this study.

In order to explore whether there were differences in educational effectiveness among universities with different depths of entrepreneurship education reform, four universities (A, B, C, and D) were selected for investigation and comparison. School A was a private university in Anhui Province, and it was recognized as a municipal base for the demonstration of entrepreneurship incubation and a municipal space for mass innovation. School B was a 985 university in Shandong Province that was recognized as a National College Students’ KAB Entrepreneurship Education Base and was in the first batch of the National College Students’ Innovative Experiment Program. School C was a 985 university in Shanxi Province that was recognized as being in the second batch of national demonstration universities for deepening entrepreneurship education reform and the first batch of the National Innovative Experimental Programs for College Students. School D was a provincial key university in Shandong Province that was recognized as being in the first batch of demonstration universities for deepening entrepreneurship education reform, in the first batch of universities with typical experience in entrepreneurship, and in the first batch of practical bases national entrepreneurship education reform. It should be noted that the sample sizes from universities A, B, C, and D were 50, 41, 38, and 51, respectively, and the remaining 426 individuals were evenly distributed among 207 universities, with a distribution of 2–3 individuals per university.

3.4. Ethical Considerations

This study was conducted in strict accordance with the principles of research ethics, such as informed consent, voluntary participation, and anonymous filling. At the beginning of the post with information and the questionnaire, the principles of the confidentiality of personal information in this study were communicated to the respondents in writing. All respondents agreed and confirmed that this study would not cause harm to them. All of the data that were ultimately collected are anonymous, and no personal data were collected. In addition, the verification of real names for the red-envelope payment process was automatically assessed, and the payments were distributed through a bank payment system based on the account information of the respondents. The research team did not obtain any personal information.

3.5. Reliability and Validity Test

The measure of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in the questionnaire was proposed in part based on a supplement of EntreComp, but the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were tested based on the principles of necessity, rigor, and validation [49]. First, the KMO and Bartlett sphericity tests were conducted on the first-level scale of the questionnaire; the results showed that the KMO value was 0.978, and the Bartlett sphericity test reached a significant level (p < 0.001), indicating that the sample data of the efficiency measure scale were very suitable for factor analysis. Then, the 15 corresponding second-level scales of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy were tested separately. The results showed that the KMO values of the 15 s-level scales were between 0.500 and 0.801, and the KMO values of the 13 s-level scales were above 0.7; all scales met the condition of Sig < 0.05 and, thus, met the conditions of factor analysis.

See

Table 2. Reliability and validity tests of the efficiency measurement scale.

Adjacent Area	Literacy	AVE	CR	Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha
Innovative thinking	Opportunity recognition	0.686	0.868	0.863
	Innovation and creation	0.570	0.799	0.794
	Vision	0.539	0.778	0.765
	Evaluation and ideas	0.531	0.693	0.671
	Value ethics	0.584	0.808	0.813
Innovative resources	Self-efficacy	0.564	0.795	0.797
	Motivation and perseverance	0.611	0.825	0.831
	Resource coordination	0.561	0.793	0.788
	Knowledge literacy	0.547	0.829	0.818
	Mobilization organization	0.649	0.847	0.841
Innovative action	Being proactive	0.618	0.829	0.812
	Plan management	0.602	0.819	0.817
	Risk coping	0.583	0.808	0.801
	Communication and cooperation	0.585	0.808	0.795
	Reflective learning	0.567	0.797	0.796

for details. The second-level scale reliability (CR) corresponding to one item of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy was 0.693, which was accepted due to the small number of scale items for this literacy. The rest of the CR values were between 0.778 and 0.868 and were far higher than the good standard of 0.65, indicating that this scale had good reliability. Cronbach’s α coefficient in the table further verified the reliability of the second-level scales. The average variance sampling (AVE) of the second-level scales corresponding to the 15 items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy ranged from 0.531 to 0.686, which was higher than the validation standard of 0.5, indicating that all scales had good convergence validity.

3.6. Access and Data Collection

This study was mainly conducted through contact groups established by the sponsors of various entrepreneurship activities that were recognized via the Ministry of Education, and then questionnaires were sent to the respondents through a mainstream online survey platform, Questionnaire Star, in China. The survey was conducted from September to October 2022.

4. Results

In this study, the SPSS 23.0 software was used for the statistical analysis of the 606 valid samples. It should be noted that a five-level Likert scoring system was used to measure the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, with values ranging from “1 = very inconsistent” to “5 = very consistent”. In this study, if the score for improvement of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy was greater than 1, this meant that entrepreneurship education played an effective role in the improvement of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. If the score was equal to 1, this meant that entrepreneurship education did not play an effective role in innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

4.1. Effect Measurement and Analysis of Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education had significant effects on the 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies investigated in this study, but there were also some differences in the effects of entrepreneurship education on each innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. See

Table 3. Results of the statistical analysis of effectiveness.

Adjacent Area	Literacy	M	SD	M (A)	M (B)	M (C)	M (D)
Innovative thinking	Opportunity recognition	3.817	0.675	3.676	3.821	4.049	4.170
	Innovation and creation	3.969	0.528	3.917	4.036	3.951	4.148
	Vision	3.991	0.525	3.944	3.964	3.988	4.319
	Evaluation and ideas	3.958	0.575	3.875	3.911	4.130	4.267
	Value ethics	4.100	0.490	4.037	3.976	4.247	4.341
Innovative resources	Self-efficacy	4.092	0.496	4.037	4.107	4.259	4.348
	Motivation and perseverance	4.103	0.494	4.074	4.107	4.296	4.289
	Resource coordination	4.102	0.493	4.019	4.155	4.185	4.341
	Knowledge literacy	3.892	0.533	3.694	3.813	3.972	4.211
	Mobilization organization	3.996	0.555	3.806	4.119	4.136	4.222
Innovative action	Being proactive	4.206	0.442	4.056	4.214	4.259	4.444
	Plan management	4.131	0.499	4.019	4.238	4.333	4.356
	Risk coping	4.006	0.531	3.741	4.107	4.062	4.215
	Communication and cooperation	4.121	0.468	4.056	4.095	4.210	4.452
	Reflective learning	4.163	0.481	4.111	4.214	4.420	4.370

for details. The mean values of all of the scores for innovation and entrepreneurship literacy reached above 3.8, and the highest was 4.206, which was far higher than the score value of 1 for the case of no increase and significantly higher than the theoretical mean value of 3. On the one hand, this showed that entrepreneurship education produced different degrees of effectiveness in the 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies of university students investigated in this study, and all 15 of the innovation and entrepreneurship literacies of university students in this study were within the range of effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. On the other hand, this showed that entrepreneurship education had a significant effect on university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, and China’s entrepreneurship education achieved substantial results. The above results support Peter Drucker’s theory that entrepreneurship can be taught [50]. In addition, the existing research also showed that entrepreneurship education has a profound impact on students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy [51]. However, there were obvious differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education on all kinds of innovation and entrepreneurship literacies. From the perspective of the mean value, the four innovation and entrepreneurship literacies with the largest increase were proactiveness, reflective learning, plan management, and communication and cooperation. All four of these innovation and entrepreneurship literacies were classified into the innovative action area in EntreComp, but the innovative action area also included the risk-coping literacy. The mean value of this literacy ranked 10th. Motivation and perseverance, resource coordination, self-efficacy, and organization mobilization followed. These four literacies belonged to the innovative resource area, which included the entrepreneurship resources that could further support university students in carrying out entrepreneurship activities. In EntreComp, this area also included knowledge literacy, but the mean value of knowledge literacy ranked 14th. It was not in the same echelon of increase as the four other literacies of the same dimension. The five literacies with the smallest increases were social value, vision, innovation and creation, evaluation, and idea and opportunity recognition, all of which belonged to the domain of innovative thinking. This result supported the conclusions of existing research: “Innovative thinking can be changed and improved, but it usually requires complete training and certain development” [52].

The depth of entrepreneurship education reform in universities had a positive promotive effect on the efficiency of entrepreneurship education, while the level of the universities has no positive promotive effect on it. As can be seen from the statistical analysis of the mean values of literacy in four universities in Table 3, the increase in the literacy of students in university D was significantly higher than that in the other three universities, except for motivation and perseverance and for reflective learning. The increase in the literacy of students in university C was significantly greater than that in university A, and the increase in the other 13 literacies was greater than that in university B, except for innovation and creation and for risk coping. The increase in the other 14 literacies—except for ethical values—of students in university B was greater than that in university A. The university levels ranked from high to low as follows: university B, university C, university D, and university A; the depth of entrepreneurship education reform ranked from deep to shallow as follows: university D, university C, university B, and university A. It can be seen that the level of the universities had no positive or significant effects on the efficiency of entrepreneurship education, and the deeper the reform of entrepreneurship education, the greater the increase in students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. There were significant differences in the efficiency of entrepreneurship education in universities with different depths of entrepreneurship education reform. This showed that the demonstration universities and practical bases of entrepreneurship education reform implemented by the Chinese government played a significant role in promoting the innovation and entrepreneurship literacy of Chinese university students, thus providing an effective top-level policy guarantee for the cultivation of the innovative talents needed by China’s modernization drive and the sustainable development of the planet. This also provides a reference for reform for the sustainable development of entrepreneurship education in countries around the world. This result echoes existing research that showed a positive correlation between increased policies and the development of entrepreneurship education [53].

4.2. Research on the Influencing Factors of Entrepreneurship Education’s Effectiveness

In this study, variance analysis was used to explore the differences in the results of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education with different background variables. See

Table 4. Variance analysis of the influence factors on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

Literacy	Duration of Participation		Score Ranking		Number of Achievements
	F-Measure	Benchmarking	F-Measure	Benchmarking	F-Measure	Benchmarking
Y1	14.054 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	7.317 **	Bottom 70% < top 30%	9.415 **	0 < 2; 1 < 2
Y2	17.904 **	0 < 1 < 2	8.242 **	Bottom 70% < top 30% 11–30% < top 10%	8.334 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2
Y3	14.564 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	5.438 *	Bottom 70% < top 10%	3.321 *	0 < 2
Y4	17.659 **	0 < 1 < 2	7.246 **	Bottom 70% < top 30%	7.990 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2
Y5	9.558 **	0 < 1 < 2	3.271 *	Bottom 70% < top 10%
Y6	10.382 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	3.595 *	Bottom 70% < top 10%	4.250 *	0 < 2; 1 < 2
Y7	8.504 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	4.009 *	Bottom 90% < top 10%	4.653 *	0 < 2; 1 < 2
Y8	14.679 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	5.381 *	Bottom 70% < top 10%	3.384 *	0 < 2
Y9	9.477 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2			3.072 *	0 < 2
Y10	13.117 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	5.738 *	Bottom 70% < top 30%	7.289 **	0 < 2; 1 < 2
Y11	7.964 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	4.254 *	Bottom 70% < top 10%	3.605 *	0 < 2
Y12	15.063 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	6.235 *	Bottom 90% < top 10%	4.465 *	0 < 1; 0 < 2
Y13	13.712 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	5.087 *	Bottom 70% < top 30%	3.165 *	0 < 2
Y14	10.154 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	5.658 *	Bottom 90% < top 10%	5.191 *	0 < 1; 0 < 2
Y15	11.684 **	0 < 1; 0 < 2	6.338 *	Bottom 90% < top 10%	5.642 *	0 < 2; 1 < 2

Note: 1. * means p < 0.05, and ** means p < 0.001; 2. In duration of participation, 0 means less than 1 year, 1 means 1–2 years, and 2 means 3 years or more; In the number of achievements, 0 means 1–3 items, 1 means 4–10 items, and 2 means 11 items or more; 3. The table only shows the variables with significant differences, and Y1 to Y15 are the 15 literacies in Table 2, such as opportunity recognition.

for details.

It was found that the duration of participation, score ranking, and number of achievements were all factors of the differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, while educational background and discipline were not. This article contends that this is due to the fact that entrepreneurship education develops generic knowledge, skills and values, therefore they were not a differences factor in the efficacy of entrepreneurship education. Then for the three literacies of innovation and creation, evaluation and ideas, and ethical values in the area of innovative thinking, the longer the duration of students’ participation in entrepreneurship education, the more significant the students’ growth rates. For the other 12 literacies, the growth rates of the students participating for 1–2 years were significantly higher than those of students participating for less than 1 year; the growth rates of students participating for more than 3 years were significantly higher than those of students participating for less than 1 year. However, there were no significant differences in effectiveness between students who participated in entrepreneurship education for 1–2 years and those who did so for more than 3 years, indicating that if the duration of students’ participation in entrepreneurship education was longer, the improvement of innovation and creation that was difficult to cultivate in later stages was more significantly improved. Meanwhile, a certain duration of participation could improve various literacies more. However, most literacies could not be continuously improved over time. This differed from the findings of Guo-Hui et al. [41], but supported the idea proposed by Davide Ravasi et al., that the results of entrepreneurship education are based on a self-reinforcing learning cycle [54]. Therefore, it was reasonable to point out in the previous section that the quality of the samples of some scholars was subject to examination. Secondly, for 14 of the items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy (excluding knowledge literacy), the growth rate of the top 10% students was significantly higher than that of the bottom 70% students, indicating that there were significant differences in the results of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education of students with different grades. Finally, for 14 of the items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy (excluding value ethics), the growth rate of the students with 11 or more achievements was significantly higher than that of the students with 1–3 achievements, and the growth rate of the students with 11 or more achievements in five items of innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, such as opportunity recognition, was significantly higher than that of the students with 1–3 and 4–10 achievements. A certain number of entrepreneurship achievements was also reflected in the degree of students’ investment in entrepreneurship education. All of the above results support Astin’s theory of student input, which states that a certain quality and quantity of input help entrepreneurship education to have a greater impact on students’ effectiveness [55].

4.3. Research on the Influence of Team Coordination on Entrepreneurship Education’s Effectiveness

This study used hierarchical regression analysis to explore the influence of project leaders’ experience on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. By using an open-ended question, the biggest difficulties encountered by the students in innovation and entrepreneurship activities were investigated. Through coding, it was found that the most frequent difficulties were innovation and creation, team coordination, and financial support; team coordination was mentioned in 105 answers, accounting for approximately 17.3% of the total sample. The problem was very representative. The problem of team coordination in this study refers to the difficulty in coordinating the advancement of student teams and development towards better achievement of tasks, where team members often did not fully participate in entrepreneurship activities. However, achieving provincial or higher achievements requires a certain amount of investment, and the lack of full participation of team members in entrepreneurship activities means that the investment of team members is reduced, so the project leader has to make up for the missing investment of team members with additional investment. This indicates that there was still room to improve the quality and efficiency of entrepreneurship education in the cultivation of student teams, except for the innovation and creation personality that was difficult to cultivate and the financial problems that have been clearly recognized by the community. Based on this, this study conducts a comparative investigation between students who had served as project leaders and students who have not served as project leaders to verify whether team coordination problems had an impact on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. It was assumed that the experience of project leaders had a significant positive impact on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education.

See

Table 5. Regression analysis of the influence of project leaders’ experience on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy.

Dependent Variable	Independent Variable							R2	Adjusted R2
	Experience as Project Leader	Control Variable
		Duration of Participation (Year)		Score Ranking (%)		Number of Achievements (Item)
		1–2	≥3	≤10	11–30	4–10	≥11
Y1	0.361 **	0.280 **	0.247 **	0.098 *	0.154 **	−0.005	0.040	0.338	0.331
Y2	0.398 **	0.258 **	0.227 **	0.133 **	0.193 **	0.012	0.017	0.366	0.358
Y3	0.488 **	0.261 **	0.200 **	0.042	0.086	−0.026	−0.051	0.398	0.391
Y4	0.437 **	0.222 **	0.217 **	0.095 *	0.119 **	0.034	−0.005	0.360	0.353
Y5	0.509 **	0.156 **	0.141 **	0.064	0.078	−0.062	−0.078 *	0.343	0.335
Y6	0.555 **	0.176 **	0.130 **	−0.005	0.044	−0.070 *	−0.031	0.401	0.394
Y7	0.579 **	0.117 **	0.106 **	−0.032	0.028	−0.035	−0.024	0.400	0.393
Y8	0.547 **	0.189 **	0.108 **	0.049	0.086	−0.030	−0.040	0.399	0.392
Y9	0.543 **	0.171 **	0.130 **	0.014	0.021	−0.039	−0.037	0.378	0.371
Y10	0.575 **	0.144 **	0.115 **	0.079	0.081	−0.024	0.005	0.428	0.421
Y11	0.646 **	0.116 **	0.067	−0.016	0.023	−0.025	−0.044	0.466	0.460
Y12	0.636 **	0.163 **	0.097 **	0.014	0.069	0.004	−0.057	0.496	0.490
Y13	0.605 **	0.175 **	0.126 **	0.066	0.056	−0.052	−0.047	0.464	0.457
Y14	0.639 **	0.124 **	0.064	−0.026	0.028	0.024	−0.046	0.468	0.461
Y15	0.599 **	0.140 **	0.085 *	0.031	0.070	−0.040	−0.012	0.436	0.430

Note: 1. The reference items of control variables are <1 year, ≥31%, 1–3 items; 2. The table adopts standardized regression coefficient; 3. Y1 to Y15 are the 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies in Table 2, such as opportunity recognition; 4. * indicates p < 0.05 and, ** means p < 0.01.

for details. The results of the regression analysis showed that the experience of project leaders had a significantly positive influence on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. From the above analysis, it can be seen that there were significant differences in the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education due to the universities of the sample students, their score rankings, their durations of participation in entrepreneurship activities, and their numbers of achievements. However, the sample students in this study were scattered among 211 universities and colleges in China; no universities with a large concentration of personnel were involved, so the bias effect caused by the concentration of personnel was avoided. That is to say, the sample results were not limited to the efficiency of entrepreneurship education and the measurement of the influencing factors of a certain university. Therefore, only three variables, excluding the university, were set as control variables to reduce errors [56]. Firstly, a multivariate collinearity test was conducted for the independent variables. The results showed that most of the independent variables had significant positive correlations, but the absolute values of correlation coefficients were small, and the correlations were weak. The variance expansion coefficients (VIFs) of the regression model were all less than 2, and the DW value was close to 2, indicating that there was no multicollinearity between independent variables and that the regression results were reliable. According to the results of the hierarchical regression analysis in Table 5, the experience of project leaders had a significant positive impact on the 15 innovation and entrepreneurship literacies, such as opportunity recognition, innovation and creation, and vision. That is to say, it had a significantly positive impact on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. At the same time, the adjusted R² values all reached the level of 0.331 to 0.490. According to the standard proposed by Cohen (1988), R² values greater than 0.25 have a strong explanatory power [57].

5. Discussion

5.1. Discussion of the Results

In the mean value specificity analysis for risk-coping and knowledge literacy in “Effectiveness Measurement and Analysis of Entrepreneurship Education”, as can be seen in Table 3, the mean value of risk-coping literacy did not significantly increase in comparison with the other innovation and entrepreneurship literacies in the same area. This study tried to clarify the reasons from two perspectives. One is that the development of entrepreneurship education in developed countries began earlier than that in China, and it achieved a deeper development than that in China. According to the analysis of the literature, the focus of relevant studies in developed countries generally changed from “individuals putting creativity into practice” to “individuals putting creativity into entrepreneurial practice”. The other perspective is that in the context of the continuous popularization of higher education in China, a large number of university students have emerged. However, the resources, educational background, and family background that most students have cannot support them in carrying out deeper entrepreneurship activities. Existing research has shown that the influences of families’ economic education on the entrepreneurial intention and economic literacy of students are positively correlated [58], so the risk-coping literacy—to which more attention is paid in entrepreneurial practice—is not significantly increased in comparison with literacy in other areas. However, with the current situation in society, it is often the case that entrepreneurial groups with smaller accounts of innovative talents have a greater need for adequate risk-coping literacy. Larger echelons of nonentrepreneurial talents have a relatively lower need for this literacy. So, from a broad perspective, entrepreneurship education still does a good job of fostering risk-coping literacy in students and has a positive effect on developing innovation and entrepreneurship literacy in the new generations to foster sustainable development.

In view of the finding that the increase in knowledge literacy was not similar to the increase in other literacies in the same area and that the ranking of the mean value of the increase was near the bottom, this study assessed the actual situation in China at the beginning of the investigation and conducted various communications with experts in entrepreneurship and typical students. Considering that the knowledge literacy described in EntreComp tended to indicate deeper entrepreneurial knowledge, this study appropriately adjusted relevant items of a classroom professional knowledge module and added them into the scope of investigation. The mean value of the relevant items of this module was relatively high in the measurement results. Based on the above analysis, it can be seen that the vast majority of Chinese university students have not yet gone into a deeper level of entrepreneurship, namely, entrepreneurial practice. Therefore, the increase in knowledge was not obvious (knowledge refers to that to which more attention is paid in entrepreneurial practice, such as finance and enterprise economy and management, as examined in EntreComp). This result also indicated that when scholars from various countries adopted EntreComp to evaluate the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, the investigation content described by this framework needed to be flexibly adjusted in some aspects. At the same time, it reflected that the knowledge in China’s entrepreneurship education still needs to be constructed at a deeper level in multiple dimensions. The above initiatives will enable entrepreneurship education to play a greater role in the cultivation of the new generation of innovative talents, which will produce more innovative citizens, leaders of enterprises and innovators in enterprises, thereby building a sustainable society and making the world a better place for future generations.

5.2. Theoretical Value

This study mainly explained the value of this research in three dimensions: theoretical testing, educational enhancement, and evaluation of effectiveness influencing factors.

First, this study tested the feasibility of using EntreComp to evaluate the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in other countries outside the EU by using empirical cases. It expanded the application area of EntreComp and formed a pioneering model for other countries to learn from EntreComp when measuring the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for sustainable development. Meanwhile, the results concerning effectiveness in this study were more real and reliable. The research team considered the sample’s validity at the beginning of the investigation. By sampling 606 students who had entrepreneurship achievements at or above the provincial level as samples, misleading evaluations of educational effectiveness made by nominal students in entrepreneurship education activities was avoided to a great extent. Compared with the research of Guo Hui and other scholars, the range of effectiveness of China’s entrepreneurship education was further verified and expanded and further reveals that entrepreneurship education can be used as a kind of ESD to cultivate the new generation of innovative talents to build a sustainable society.

Second, this study provides an empirical reference for the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in enhancing students’ creative literacy, which is generally recognized as difficult to cultivate in the academic community, and it also verifies the effectiveness of a certain duration of participation and team cultivation in promoting the cultivation of innovative talents. This can actually widely serve the reform of entrepreneurship education and strengthen the promotive effect of entrepreneurship education in the majority of students. In a real sense, it can also enable “broad-spectrum” entrepreneurship education to achieve comprehensive popularization and give full play to the effects of education in universities around the world to cultivate the new generation of innovative talents and can provide strong and high-quality innovative talents for the modernization of the nation and sustainable development of the planet. Furthermore, this will enhance the ESD nature of entrepreneurship education.

Third, the research dimension involved in this study was deeper and broader, and the samples were more scientific and reasonable. The effective sample of students covered 211 universities in China, and there were no large numbers of students who represented a single university, which prevented the effect of partial expression in which the evaluation results for the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education would be more favorable to a university due to the proportion of its staff who were represented. A direct and overall measurement of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in China was realized. At the same time, representative exploration and verification of the factors affecting the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education were carried out, thus providing a theoretical basis for scholars in the field to carry out relevant research and for policymakers to make policies. As a result, relevant research and policies can better enhance the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and provide exogenous power for promoting the cultivation of more innovative citizens, leaders of enterprises and innovators in enterprises, thereby building a sustainable society.

5.3. Policy Suggestions

Based on the empirical research on the current situation of entrepreneurship education in China, this study provides the following suggestions for the reform of entrepreneurship education in universities according to the survey data in order to widen entrepreneurship education, create a complete ecosystem of entrepreneurship education, and empower the cultivation of talents in higher education for comprehensive improvement. In turn, this will enable the cultivation of innovative citizens, leaders of enterprises and innovators in enterprises, which will generate a positive effect in contributing to the sustainable development of the planet and the building of a sustainable society.

First, universities should strive to play a good role in the cultivation of innovative talents, use educational innovation and problem-solving as support for correcting the traditional perception of students that innovation and entrepreneurship are out of reach, and address other negative problems that keep growing. This study fully confirms that students’ engagement in entrepreneurship activities significantly affects the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and that increasing students’ engagement in entrepreneurship activities will help higher education play a more nurturing role. Therefore, universities need to integrate entrepreneurship education into curriculum teaching, which is the main source of students’ learning input. They need to effectively connect their curriculum teaching with existing entrepreneurship activities, such as various competitions, scientific research projects, scientific research creation, entrepreneurial practice, and innovation clubs, in order to guide students in enhancing their investment in entrepreneurship activities. Universities ought to resolutely avoid formal reform in a simple sense and to take multiple simultaneous measures to improve the quality and efficiency of education reform. In addition, many universities lack timely evaluations of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Therefore, they need to establish their own evaluation systems for the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, strive to do a good job in evaluating the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and problem-solving, and constantly adjust, improve, and implement relevant policies and institutions in order to give full play to their supporting and leading roles. Meanwhile, universities should carry out in-depth reforms of entrepreneurship education and teaching so that the reforms can be supported and their results are effective.

Second, development systems for universities and innovative project teams should be fully constructed by using cultural nourishment and team building as support to redeem students’ innovative beliefs and to sustainably develop talent teams. In this study, the survey results for the items concerning the purposes for students’ participation in entrepreneurship activities also showed that the top five purposes were enriching their resumes, personal interest, obtaining scholarships, obtaining honors, and creating value. Therefore, universities should cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship with the characteristics of the school, such as by being proactive and building their own “cultural walls” for entrepreneurship education based on the actual situation of the school. Universities need to deeply promote and carry forward the developmental histories, achievements, spirit of innovation, exemplary demonstrations, and other key elements of typical project teams. They should make full use of the guarantees of multipath and multiarea linkage policies, such as postgraduate promotions and exemptions, credit incentives, bonuses and honors, innovation funding, etc. At the same time, this study indirectly verified that the team coordination problem significantly and positively affected the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education through hierarchical regression analysis. The keys to solving the problem of team coordination are the project leaders and the instructors. An existing study also tested the importance of the instructors and the student-oriented mentors in fostering students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy [59,60]. Therefore, universities should continue to develop and strengthen batches of typical project teams while cultivating batches of high-quality student-oriented mentors and project leaders. Relevant instructors should try to play the role of seniors together with the student-oriented mentors and should try to play the role of organization, leadership, and coordination together with the project leaders.

6. Practical Implications

First of all, this study measured and tested the effectiveness of the cultivation of the new generation of innovative talents through entrepreneurship education based on the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, thus confirming that entrepreneurship education is very effective in fostering the new generation of innovative talents to build a sustainable society. Universities, governments, and all sectors of society should continue to increase their investment in entrepreneurial education and make it a full form of ESD. Secondly, this study explored the factors influencing the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and provided a theoretical reference for improving the quality and efficiency of entrepreneurship education on the macro level. It also provided substantive policy recommendations for universities, such as “firmly adhering to educational innovation and problem finding” and “striving to build a good cultural system and team development system”. Finally, this study promoted the development of entrepreneurship education by exploring its effectiveness and influencing factors. High-quality entrepreneurship education not only effectively improves the comprehensive literacy of students so that they have the ability to have a better life, but also fosters more innovative citizens, leaders of enterprises and innovators in enterprises, so that it provides a steady stream of a new generation of innovative talents to build a sustainable society.

7. Limitations and Future Studies

Although this study made a breakthrough in terms of research design, quality control, and dimensional coverage, the following limitations that can be improved in future studies still exist. Firstly, this study adopted a cross-sectional design, and it lacked a longitudinal and stage-specific examination of the sample students. Secondly, this study mainly focused on the macroinfluencing factors of the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, and the examination and exploration of microinfluencing factors were not sufficiently detailed and in-depth. Therefore, in future studies, a sufficient number of relevant students can be recruited to form a relatively stable sample pool, and it can be ensured that the students in the sample pool are continuously cultivated and tracked for the research so as to establish a stable sample group for longitudinal research. On the other hand, the microinfluencing factors of educational efficacy can be extensively collected through field interviews or anonymous writing, and the collected audio materials and textual materials can be coded for research. Preferably, the implementation of this research should be carried out by personnel who will not make the interviewees feel uneasy.

8. Conclusions

This study found that the effectiveness of the cultivation of innovative talents through entrepreneurship education is significant. At the same time, there are significant differences in the effectiveness of the cultivation of innovative talents among universities with different depths of entrepreneurship education reform. In other words, universities at any level have the capacity to foster the new generation of innovative talents, thus providing an exogenous impetus for building a sustainable society, which, in turn, can consolidate ESD. Secondly, in addition to educational background and academic disciplines, the score rankings of sample students, the participation duration, and the number of achievements are all influential factors in the differences in the effectiveness of the cultivation of innovative talents through entrepreneurship education. Lastly, the experience of project leaders has a significant positive effect on the effectiveness of the cultivation of innovative talents through entrepreneurship education, and there is much room for improvement in student team cultivation in entrepreneurship education in universities. This indicates that there is still much potential for improving the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education for sustainable development.