To provide a closer look at entrepreneurship education in more details, initiatives at three pilot institutions are discussed in detail below, including Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Renmin University of China. Each university represents a different entrepreneurship education model in China.
4.1. Entrepreneurship Education in Tsinghua University
Entrepreneurship education at Tsinghua University reportedly dates back to 1983, when the university organized the first Challenge Cup Competition and Exhibition for Extracurricular Academic Science Projects. This event was so successful that the government expanded it to the whole higher education sector. In 1997, Tsinghua University launched its annual Student Entrepreneurship Competition, which is heralded as the official beginning of China’s entrepreneurship education initiative.
Entrepreneurship education at Tsinghua University is administered by the Office of the Youth League, which traditionally focuses on student ideology. Entrepreneurship education at Tsinghua University is generally characterized by innovative education as its basis; the Student Entrepreneurship Competition as its vehicle; entrepreneurship education courses and international exchanges as its “push”; co-curricular entrepreneurial activities as its primary format; and the development of entrepreneurship awareness, ability, and quality as its primary content.
As one of the pilot institutions selected by the Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University proposed the model of “Innovation Loop” to carry out entrepreneurship education. Specifically, the loop emphasizes a benign interaction among innovation awareness, practice, and outcome, with a support system in place to ensure the smooth transition from awareness to practice, then to outcome, and finally back to awareness. The support system includes: (1) financial support (i.e., an innovation fund as the seed money), (2) consulting support (i.e., an expert commission consisting of faculty members, and labs open to students as the base for co-curricular science and tech activities), and (3) a support system for students to take part in domestic and international competitions and exchanges.
The Student Entrepreneurship Competition has been a crucial part of Tsinghua’s entrepreneurship education, with over 40% of the student body having either participated or wishing to participate in this event. Starting in May 1998, the institution offered entrepreneurship training in the form of workshops, seminar, salons, and investment fairs. The original goal of this competition was to urge students’ scientific transfer; facilitate the interaction among students, S&T achievements, and venture capital; and eventually lead to the establishment of student-initiated enterprises. The event formerly focused on communication between students and investors, business ideas, and value, instead of on education for the overall student body. Although some student enterprises emerged as a result of this event, few lasted very long, partly because China lacks a mature mechanism of venture capital and fails to provide necessary counseling and assistance, and partly because students were not fully prepared in terms of awareness, qualities, and abilities. These failures, in turn, affected students’ confidence in entrepreneurship. Realizing this mistake, Tsinghua University has changed the focus of this event and now uses it to enhance entrepreneurship awareness, qualities, and ability in university students. As a supplement, the university also established Summer Boot Camp for Entrepreneurship Qualities, making available the experience of entrepreneurial businesses to competition teams and providing short-term internships for the participants, thereby making the boot camp more like a course. Moreover, the university has designed systematic training programs on entrepreneurial skills. By doing so, the competition has switched from an emphasis on competitiveness to the development of entrepreneurship skills and from attracting a small elite group to involving a wider representation from the student body. The goal is no longer to encourage students to start business upon graduation, but instead to cultivate the inter-disciplinary talents of risk prediction and business awareness, as well as a solid knowledge base.
Besides the Student Entrepreneurship Competition, Tsinghua has developed or encouraged students to participate in other competitions, including National Entrepreneurship Competition, Graduate Student Technology Entrepreneurship Competition, Tsinghua Summer Camp for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Global Entrepreneurship Competition [
7]. Moreover, Tsinghua University has solely, or in collaboration with other institutions, launched various projects on entrepreneurship education, such as Talents Business Plan for undergraduate students, the National College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Camp, China Entrepreneurs Summer Camp, Innovation Management Design, the Global Technology Entrepreneurship Program (in cooperation with University of California at Berkeley), the Venture Lab (in cooperation with Taiwan Tsinghua University), and Tsinghua Graduate Student Business Plan Practice (in cooperation with Tsinghua Science Park) [
20].
Tsinghua University has expanded its course offerings on entrepreneurship education. In 2000, only two courses were offered, “Entrepreneurship Management” and “Venture Capital”. A decade later, ten more courses have been added to the catalog, including “Business Plan”, “Leadership”, “the Growth of Corporations”, “Venture Marketing”, “Venture Finance”, “New Product Development”, “Organizational Structure and Design”, “Opportunity and Business Plans for Entrepreneurship”, “Venture Lab” and “New Venture Creation” [
16]
. As one of the most prestigious universities in China, Tsinghua University took advantage of its international networks to push for stronger entrepreneurship education. As a member of the Global Network of Business Plan Competitions, Tsinghua University has conducted active exchanges with the world’s premier universities. In September 2009, Tsinghua University and the University of California at Berkeley jointly established the Tsinghua-Berkeley Global Technology Entrepreneurship Program (GTE), which teaches core concepts in technology entrepreneurship and innovation to a pilot group of 50 Tsinghua students, primarily graduate students from engineering and science. The program includes four components, including five credit courses; skill in business plan development; practice with over 30 mentors, mostly alumni of Tsinghua University and the University of California at Berkeley; and incubation in two science parks. A key tenet of the program is bringing real-world experience to the classroom. To this end, seasoned entrepreneurs and experts in innovation from the Asia-Pacific region and the United States join the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in Tsinghua’s Beijing classrooms. The goal is to universalize entrepreneurial knowledge and develop the world’s next technology leaders.
During the last decade, the approach to entrepreneurship education has broadened as well. In 2000, there were only two lectures on knowledge and skill yet no practice of any sort at all. In 2010, a component of practice was added. Besides completing relevant courses, students can participate in internships and implement their business plans in an incubator. For the incubation, Tsinghua University collaborates with two science parks: Tsinghua Science Park, the largest university science park in China with over 400 corporations, including world-known corporations such as Microsoft, Google and Proctor and Gamble; the Haidian Incubator, which primarily houses enterprises by oversee returnees’ enterprises. The university has garnered investments from both Chinese and international agencies, which provided consultation and funds to student entrepreneurs [
20].
In terms of research on entrepreneurship education, Tsinghua University has established China Research Center for Entrepreneurship, which is Global Enterprise Monitor’s sole partner in China in issuing an annual China report. According to the report, entrepreneurship is the fundamental driving force for economic development and wealth creation. The mission of the National Entrepreneurship Research Center at Tsinghua University is to cultivate the leaders of China’s high-tech ventures and venture capital firms. The center offers educational courses and conducts basic research to further the understanding of the dynamic process of entrepreneurship. With the support of the government, the center advocates in-depth policy and strategy research on entrepreneurship and venture capital in China. The center also develops cooperation among domestic and international institutions and enterprises for knowledge contribution and the effective transformation from knowledge to wealth [
21].
4.2. Entrepreneurship Education in Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
At Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, entrepreneurship education is administered by three units on campus—the training institute, the incubator, and the science park. Each unit supports entrepreneurship education in different stages of a student-initiated enterprise. Specifically, the University’s Training Institute for Entrepreneurship Management is devoted to offering entrepreneurship-related courses to the students and also provides technical consultation to students after they develop a workable business plan and officially begin an enterprise. The university’s science park serves as the incubator.
Entrepreneurship education focuses on developing students’ knowledge, skills, and ideas on the management of emerging and growing enterprises. The curriculum consists of ten modules, including opportunities and entrepreneurship, strategic management of enterprises, human resources management, marketing, financial management, taxation planning, legal support, accounting, risk management, and innovative thinking and entrepreneurship management. These modules aim to apply students’ knowledge to real-world scenarios and to realize expansive contacts between students and entrepreneurs so that the former can acquire necessary skills, knowledge, and ideas related to entrepreneurship.
Only one to three entrepreneurship-related courses are required for students at the university, with practice-oriented activities embedded. For example, the course “Science & Tech Entrepreneurship” is open to all undergraduates and covers entrepreneurship skills and basic qualities and abilities for entrepreneurs, with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship awareness. A business plan is required at the end of the course, and those students who stand out will be awarded with an entrepreneurship fund of over $ 6,000 to launch their enterprises. Graduate students can choose the course “Entrepreneurship Management”, and some have started up their business as a result.
Besides providing classroom learning, the university, relying primarily upon its alumni resources, has also created various co-curricular events which enable students to learn about entrepreneurship. For example, the Campus-wide Business Plan Competition selects and provides funding for promising business plans, using the Trust Fund for Entrepreneurship as the seed money. The New Forum on Entrepreneurship invites entrepreneurs to teach college students real-world entrepreneurship face-to-face. Entrepreneurship Saturday, initiated by the University Science Park and the University Alumni’s Entrepreneurs Division, facilitates the dialogue between students and successful entrepreneurs, especially prominent graduates of the university. The University’s Training Institute for Entrepreneurship Management chooses entrepreneurship tutors to provide technical consultation to students. Moreover, the tutors, most of whom are alumni owning or running successful enterprisers, provide short-term positions to their student advisees so that they can experience the responsibilities of running an enterprise.
During the incubation, the university’s science park appoints its senior managers to offer guidance and deliver relevant services, including further assistance from registered consultants and experts in the related fields, partial waiver of rent, and preferential policies about taxation for three years during incubation. At the end of the third year, if a new enterprise has achieved market survivability, it will move to university’s science park and seek further growth there; otherwise the university will deem it a failure and announce its discontinuation [
7].
4.3. Entrepreneurship Education in Renmin University of China
Renmin University of China focuses its entrepreneurship education on the enhancement of students’ overall ability and quality, with the goal of cultivating innovation, creativeness, and entrepreneurship in students. What makes the university’s entrepreneurship education unique is that it proposes integrating entrepreneurship education into quality education, which is a new education mode in China that stands in contrast to an examination-oriented education. The university’s entrepreneurship education emphasizes raising students’ entrepreneurship awareness, building a sound knowledge structure for entrepreneurship, and enhancing overall quality, primarily through a seamless combination of classroom instruction and extracurricular learning. To its curriculum the university adds entrepreneurship-related electives, such as “Entrepreneurial Spirit”, “Venture Investment” and “Enterprise Management”. The university also calls for a reform of instructional activities and encourages more participation from students, as well as interaction between instructors and students.
Although this university’s entrepreneurship education is primarily achieved inside the classroom, it also encourages its students to engage themselves in social courses and charities. By participating in entrepreneurship education seminars and various competition activities, students have formed entrepreneurship education practice groups that are based primarily within discipline or organized by student clubs. The university has also launched the National Entrepreneurship Forum for College Students and has invited scholars and entrepreneurs to teach entrepreneurship education on campus. In addition, the university has established long-term entrepreneurship education bases, such as Visa Entrepreneurs Classroom, to develop entrepreneurship in students. To encourage peer learning, the university has initiated Tell Your Story Program for students active in entrepreneurship education-related activities to share their experience. The university also hosts the Star of Management Competition, with prestigious entrepreneurs as the judges, and invites business plans from Beijing’s universities [
7].
A comparison of the three cases shows that despite their different approach to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, the three institutions have much in common. For example, all focus on the entrepreneurship awareness, skills, and ability; all rely upon both classroom learning and co-curricular activities; all have created entrepreneurship courses, mostly electives for undergraduates; and all use seminars by successful entrepreneurs and business plan competition to engage students in extracurricular entrepreneurship-related learning.